It is shown, indeed, that this belief in the life-bringing power of baths of blood, to the death-smitten lepers, was continued into the Middle Ages; and that it finally “received a check from an opinion gradually gaining ground, that only the blood of those would be efficacious, who offered themselves freely and voluntarily for a beloved sufferer.”[242] There is something very suggestive in this thought of the truest potency of transferred life through transferred blood! It is this thought which finds expression and illustration in Longfellow’s Golden Legend. In the castle of Vautsberg on the Rhine, Prince Henry is sick with a strange and hopeless malady. Lucifer appears to him in the garb of a traveling physician, and tells him of the only possible cure for his disease, as prescribed in a venerable tome: “‘The only remedy that remains Is the blood that flows from a maiden’s veins, Who of her own free will shall die, And give her life as the price of yours!’ That is the strangest of all cures, And one, I think, you will never try; The prescription you may well put by, As something impossible to find Before the world itself shall end!” Elsie, the lovely daughter of a peasant in the Odenwald learns of the Prince’s need, and declares she will give her blood for his cure. In her chamber by night, her self-surrendering prayer goes up: “‘If my feeble prayer can reach thee, O my Saviour, I beseech thee, Even as thou hast died for me, More sincerely Let me follow where thou leadest, Let me, bleeding as thou bleedest, Die, if dying I may give Life to one who asks to live, And more nearly, Dying thus, resemble thee!’” Her father, Gottlieb, consents to her life-surrender, saying to the Prince: “‘As Abraham offered, long ago, His son unto the Lord, and even The Everlasting Father in heaven Gave his, as a lamb unto the slaughter, So do I offer up my daughter.’” And Elsie adds: “‘My life is little, Only a cup of water, But pure and limpid. Take it, O Prince! Let it refresh you, Let it restore you. It is given willingly It is given freely; May God bless the gift!’” The proffered sacrifice is interfered with before its consummation; but its purposed method shows the estimate which was put, from of old, on voluntarily yielded life for life.