Heinrich Heine, at least, tells us that this was the infallible result of justice in the Middle Ages, and the Middle Ages ended in Germany but yesterday. There was also a trial by bread and cheese (_exorcismus panis hordeacei, vel casei, ad probationem veri_), but bread and cheese are not elements. Let us return to the elementary spirits of Water. During the great religious reaction which took place after the days of Charlemagne, all the mythological gods of rivers and streams had gradually returned, more or less successfully, to their former occupations. The great Nix or Nichus, upon whom devolved the rule over all the rivers of Germany, was no other than the ancient Niord, a very important deity and a kind of Northern Neptune. This very weighty discovery is due to the learned Mallet. No doubt this god Niord was one of those who, on their disastrous flight from Argentoratum, had {286}fallen into the Rhine. They thought that he was drowned, but he had only taken refuge in one of the lowest, almost unfathomable depths of the river. From this safe retreat the great Nichus had defied the decrees of Councils and the anathemas of the Christians hurled against all elementary spirits alike; there he had summoned the subaltern deities of sources, ponds, lakes, and smaller streams, the nymphs of the banks, and the hideous, scaly monsters which swarmed at the bottom of the river. Organizing all these into a people, an escort, and an army, he had come forth and invaded at the head of his host the banks of the Neckar and the Main, the Moselle and the Meuse, the great tributaries of the Rhine, and governed the inhabitants of the banks by terror. More than once he had extended his ravages far beyond the plains, overthrowing churches that had but just been completed, and drowning in his waters all the deserters from the altars of Odin. Niord was a wicked god, who had a fearful temper. He held his subjects, to whatever class they might belong, completely under his yoke, treating them capriciously and cruelly, and making of the Rhine a hell of waters. It is to this dark and damp kingdom of the great Nichus that we have to go in order to make the acquaintance, not of his great dignitaries, but {287}of the very humblest and lowest of his subjects, the Nixen and the male and female Undines, a race of anathematized demons, who make up, by themselves, almost the whole population of this realm beneath the waters of the Rhine.