Indeed! cried the colonel.
Assuredly, replied the assertor, though it may not have fallen in your way to be certified of the fact. I could, if necessary, adduce a host of witnesses to attest the wonders, that have been effected by the human genius, unassisted with instruction; but as your profession, Colonel Wilson, has probably occupied too much of your attention to allow of your turning your thoughts to enquiries of this cast, the things I might relate of Lipsius, of Quirino, Alphonsus Tostatus and many others of equal celebrity might appear to you incredible.
Very likely, interjected the colonel.
Yet are they, every one, supported by irrefragable authorities. The mind of man, my friend, is in itself a miracle, and persons, who have been predestined to extraordinary occasions, have been born under extraordinary circumstances, as was the case with Luther, who, whilst he was yet an infant at the breast, maintained a Latin thesis against the Pope’s infallibility, which gave rise to the saying, that he sucked in controversy with his mother’s milk.
My very good and learned friend, said Wilson, that you have somewhere crossed upon this idle legend, amongst the boundless mass of books that you have consulted I am well persuaded; but that you will commit your excellent understanding by stating it in serious proof of the question we are upon I am loth to suppose. When I believe your account of Luther’s coming into the world with a square cap and gown, I will believe his thesis at the breast, and, when I believe that, I will not dispute the story of the prolific lady, who was delivered of three hundred and sixty-five children at a birth.
I dare say you will not dispute it, rejoined De Lancaster, when you hear the evidences for the truth of it. The prolific lady, you allude to, was the Countess Herman of Henneberg, daughter of Count Floris, Earl of Holland, Zealand and Friesland, and son of William of Holland, first of that name; Floris was treacherously slain by the old Earl of Clermont at a public triumph, and left behind him this daughter Margaret, who married the aforesaid Count Herman of Henneberg. She, despising the petition of a poor widow, who with twins at her breast asked charity, gave her very reproachful words withal; whereupon the widow, failing on her knees, appealed to Heaven in vindication of her innocency, and earnestly prayed, that as she had conceived and brought forth those two infants lawfully by her husband, even so, if ever that lady should be pregnant, she might be visited with as many children at a birth as there were days in the year. Not long after, the lady conceived, and went into Holland to visit the earl her brother, taking up her abode in the abbey of religious women at Leyden, where on the Friday before Palm Sunday in the year 1276 she was delivered of three hundred and sixty-five children, the one half being sons and the other daughters, but the odd babe was double-sexed. They were all baptised by Guydon, suffragan to the bishop of Utrecht, who named all the sons John, and the daughters Elizabeth, but what name he gave to the odd child, said De Lancaster with much gravity, I must own to you I do not find recorded.
John-Elizabeth for a certainty, said the Colonel. It may be so, resumed the narrator; but I hazard no conjectures, I only detail facts. They were however no sooner baptised than they all died, and the mother likewise. Their two baptismal basins are still preserved, and have been by me seen and examined in the said church at Leyden, together with the inscription on the Countess’s tomb in Latin and in Dutch, the former beginning thus—Margareta, Comitis Hennebergiæ uxor, et Florentii Hollandiæ et Zelandiæ filia, &c. &c. Underneath is the following distich, the first line of which has been some how or other curtailed of its proper metrical proportion, as you will perceive—
—En tibi monstrosum et memorabile factum,
Quale nec a mundi conditione datum.
Here Robert De Lancaster, having closed his narrative, turned a look upon his friend, that seemed to appeal to him for his judgment on the case. The colonel made no reply, and it may be presumed that the appellant set down his silence to the score of his conviction.