That there came down, a torrent from the Alps,
I entered where a key unlocks a kingdom;
The road and river, as they wind along
Filling the mountain-pass. There, till a ray
Glanced through my lattice and the household stir
Warned me to rise, to rise and to depart.”
There was much to interest us at Saint-Maurice, which traces its ancestry to an old Keltic town called Acaunum or Agaunum (as the Latins spelled it). Here once occurred an event which would have pleased Count Tolstoï. A manuscript of the Ninth Century, discovered by Professor Emil Egli at Zürich, relates it as follows:—
“In the army of the Roman Emperor Maximilian who reigned from 286 until 306 a. d. was enrolled a legion brought from the east and called the Thebæan Legion. They hesitated about fighting brother-Christians. The Emperor learned in the neighboring town of Octodurum that the legion was mutinous in the narrow pass of Agaunum. He ordered every tenth man to be beheaded. But when the legion persisted in its obstinacy he repeated the punishment. Those left mutually exhorted one another to persist and their leader Mauricius with two officers, Exuperius and Candidus advised them rather to perish than to fight against Christians.
“So they threw down their arms and were hacked to pieces.”
The legion consisted of sixty-six hundred men. According to other legends—for this is only a legend which arose in the Fifth Century—some of the legion were subjected to a martyr’s death elsewhere—Ursus, Victor and Verena at Solothurn, Felix and Regula at Zürich. However the story may be regarded, the town is supposed to have received its name from the leader of the Eastern legion. The abbey now occupied by Augustine canons who take pride (for a fee) in showing their treasures—a Saracen vase, a gold crozier and a silver ewer presented by Charlemagne, and other relics—is said to date back to the Fourth Century and was founded by Saint Theodore, one of Licinius’ Greek officers, who was converted and put to death.