When Witikind was beaten by Charlemagne at Engter, a poor old woman,
unable to follow him in his flight, uttered lamentable cries and thus
added to the panic among the defeated army. When the {386}soldiers
obeyed Witikind’s orders and stopped for a moment in the heat of their
flight, they threw a mass of sand and rock upon the old woman. They did
not expect that she would die when thus buried alive; their commander
had told them: “She will come back!”
This old woman, who is to come back, is Teutonia, and it was her name
that Frederick Barbarossa was murmuring to himself as he fell asleep
for another century.
When the old woman shall have succeeded in extricating herself from
this mass of sand and rock which weighs her down, then and then only
the great day will come. The heroes who now are held captive in their
mountains and subterranean grottoes, will shake off the torpor of their
long sleep; they will reappear among their people, the dead trees will
bear new foliage to proclaim their return by a miracle, and the cry of:
Teutonia! Teutonia! will resound in a thousand valleys, and the birds
even will repeat the name!
They say that when this long wished for day does come, Germany will be
freed of all her difficulties, and will boast of having but one
creed, one law, and one heart; she will be glorious and free, one and
indivisible!
We must wait for the birds to tell us so, before we believe it. {387}At
that time Teutonia and her emperors were alike asleep. They mention a
peasant woman from Mayence, who on her way home became so exhausted and
unable to bear the heat of the sun, that she had to seek shelter in an
isolated house, standing by the wayside in the midst of a plantation of
young trees. It was a dwelling of a skillful magician. She asked him for
leave to rest there a few moments. As he was in the midst of some of
his most abstruse calculations, he only replied by nodding his head, and
glanced with his eye at a bench in the most distant part of the room.
She went and sat down, but only on the edge, hardly knowing if she was
allowed to do so or not; every moment she got up to ask her host if she
disturbed him, and if she had not better leave him, tired and exhausted
as she was. She told him that she would much rather endure the heat and
the fatigue, than be a burden to him, she begged him not to mind her and
to go on just as if she were not there, and a host of similar phrases.
Annoyed by her incessant, idle talk, the magician suddenly turned round
and fixedly looked her full in the face. Immediately she fell asleep.
(There was no doubt some knowledge of magnetism already in the world
at that time, but as yet only of magic magnetism). When the good woman
awoke, {388}she was alone; her host had left her. To her great regret
she was compelled to leave without being able to thank him for his
hospitality in her usual profuse manner, and to beg him to excuse her
falling asleep, when he did her the honor of keeping her company.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account