sorrowfully complies, grieving that the true God had not yet conquered their hearts, though his might had been shown in such a way, and goes his way with Buffalo to the Suevian settlement. Here he takes up his abode in a cave, in front of which is a spring called Odin’s Spring, and in which the Germans bathe their new-born children and give them names. Meanwhile, Withimer, the Christian, struggles with his love, and Bissula, the proud, beautiful heathen princess, still refuses to marry him unless he will undertake the duty of avenging her murdered father and brothers. St. Martin reasons with both, and at last prevails with the former to give up his love for the sake of his conscience; but having painted the evils of ingratitude to God and of eternal damnation in vain, he at last conquers the youth by reminding him that, as a German, it would be an indelible disgrace to him to forswear himself by breaking his baptismal vows. Bissula mourns his sudden departure, which she attributes to a messenger having recalled him during her absence, and turns her attention to preserving her last remaining brother from the hatred of the Billing. This she does by resorting to the charms of the Abruna woman Velleda, a priestess said to be hundreds of years old, and to possess marvellous powers, as Circe of old, to change men into stones, trees, and animals. She is, however, not a witch, but the enemy of witches; and here follows a terrible account of the cruelties and absurdities to which the belief in witches led in those times, and, indeed, in all times. Châteaubriand’s[24] beautiful Gallic Velleda is a very different character from this hideous old hag of the Black Forest. Though not a witch, she has, in Bolanden’s book, all the conventional “properties” of one in the shape of a talking raven and two snakes entwined round her neck and arms. She promises Katuwald to give Bissula a love-drink, to turn her heart from Withimer to himself; and by a charm, consisting of a piece of skin inscribed with mystic characters, she promises to Hermanric invulnerability against “sword and spear.”