Yes, sir, the first is Pope Gregory, the second Saint Boniface the missionary, and the third the Emperor Charlemagne. Do not be afraid; I shall {256}do no more than mention them, for fear of going again out of my way and of speaking of forbidden subjects, against which you have warned me. Allow me, however, to add that if the struggle which the great Emperor undertook, was a long and ter-tible one, it was also glorious far beyond all. Was it not marvelous, I ask you, to see this nation of Franks, which but just now consisted of a mixture of barbarians, go forth under the command of their young king, to become the protector of Rome, of civilization, and of Christianity? The mace had become a shield, the siege-ram a wall and a rampart. “Of course! Everybody knows that!” But, did you know this, sir: When the Saxons, conquered for the tenth time, had received baptism, together with their king Witikind, when the Rhine, also baptized, had become a French river and a Christian river, when the whole of Germany bowed low before the cross, one of the nations of that country, the Borussians (Pruszi, or Prussians), refused to give up their old gods, and continued to refuse for several centuries to come? And yet it was so. The proscribed gods, finding a refuge on the banks of the Oder and the Spree, paid frequent visits, as was quite natural, to their former followers. It was thus that the old pagan creed was long preserved in the remote regions of Germany. You see, sir, I have returned to my subject. {257}Let us rapidly conclude this first part of our task, so as to reach at last the modern gods, who were as popular as the others, and in their way neither less strange nor less curious. During the time of the Middle Ages, Germany had been filling up with towns and castles, feudal dungeons bearing aloft a helmet and a cross. The cross arose wherever two streets met in a city and at every cross-road in the country; the most beautiful cathedrals in the world and the most magnificent monasteries were reflected in her broad river; and still, in field and forest, in city and country, and along the banks of the Rhine, the false gods were worshipped in secret. As the church taught that they were to be looked upon as demons, the people dared not treat them badly. Demons are not guests to be turned out rudely. “From the eighth century of our Christian era,” says one of our erudite authorities, “the Saxons and Sarmatians heard the Christian missionaries speak so continually of the formidable power of Satan, that they thought it best to worship him secretly in order to disarm his wrath and perhaps to win his favor. They called him the Black God or _Tybilinus_; the Germans call him, even now, _Dibel or Teufel_.” This Black God now became for all the German {258}nations the army leader of their proscribed gods, an army which was presently to be largely increased.