“She lived alone in her chamber, in company with her distaff, and ignorant of what happened even within the narrow circle of shadows which the sun traced around her house, and the image of a man was as foreign to her eyes as it was to her mind. Her thoughts and her eyes had alike kept their chastity perfect. “She was called Marietta. “One day, on a fine spring morning, Marietta felt a vague and incomprehensible desire to enjoy the beauties of Nature. Her heart rose within her with strange emotion. {247} “Impelled rather by a desire of her own than by a command from on high, she opened her door and hastened to a meadow inclosed with a hedge, which was near the house. “In this hedge a sweet-briar was in bloom. She drew near to inhale the fragrance; she touched the flower, and that was all that was needed. Marietta became a mother, and when her son was born she felt by the boundless pride that filled her heart, that she had given birth to a god. “In the mean time the other gods of her own country and of the adjoining countries had been warned by their prophetesses that this child, born of a virgin and a flower, would one day drive them out of heaven; they assembled, fully armed and determined that mother and child must both die so as to prevent the threatened catastrophe. “At the moment when they were holding their secret councils, Marietta appeared in their midst holding her infant in her arms, and all these gods, who had until now wielded such absolute power, fled in dismay to the far North, and the icy gates of the North Pole closed behind them.” This is the story of Marietta and her child Jesus. It would certainly seem as if this naïve account, well known among the ancient legends of Finland, was nothing less than a slight sketch of that great epic poem which we have laid before our readers. {248}We have only filled out the details by the aid of similar documents. Henceforth Christianity enjoyed the results of that great day at Argentoratum. At a later period the conquered gods, it is true, showed once more signs of resistance on isolated points, but from the first, this triumph of Mary and Jesus, and perhaps also the victories obtained by King Clovis, changed the first dawn of Christianity in Germany into a kind of purifying conflagration, which spread rapidly from the Rhine to the Weser and from the Weser to the Danube.