Ottilia (thus was she named) grew up a lovely maiden, with rare goodness and virtues, showing, from her earliest youth, singular piety and devoutness of character. One of her daily prayers was that God might bestow on her the gift of sight. By-and-by, to the great astonishment of all, this prayer was answered. Beautiful before, the new expression of her eyes so enhanced her charms that, whereas previously she had no lack of suitors, now she was wooed by many and most noble youths. These dazzling prospects affected the mind of her father, and led him to repent the vow he had made to give his sweet child to God. Then Count Adelhart, a brave man, and one who had performed great services for Attich, claimed the hand of Ottilia, and the duke resolved that his daughter should become his wife. Ottilia heard this with terror; she told her father how wrong she believed it to be, and how she feared the vengeance of heaven if they thus disregarded his vow. Seeing, however, that her entreaties were of no avail, and that they meant to marry her by compulsion, she fled she knew not whither. Then Attich called out his servants to pursue her, he himself, in company with Ottilia's suitor, taking the lead. They took the road to Freiburg, in Breisgau.
The day began to decline, and their efforts to find her had been in vain, when, on riding up a hill from whose top they could overlook the country, they heard a cry; turning their eyes toward the place from whence the sound came, they saw her whom they were seeking standing on the summit. They urged their steeds onward, rejoicing in the certainty of capturing the fugitive. Then Ottilia threw herself upon her knees, and prayed to heaven for assistance. The rock opened beneath her feet, and, in the sight of all, she sank into the yawning depth. The rock closed again, and, from the spot where it had been reft in twain, a clear well flowed, taking its course downward into the forest below.
The mourning father returned to his now desolate home. Never again did he behold Ottilia.
The wonderful tale soon spread far and near. The fountain became a place of pilgrimage. People drank from its waters, to which a wonderful healing influence for weak eyes was attributed. A hermit built his hut in its neighborhood, and “The Well of S. Ottilia” was and is much frequented by old and young. The mountain itself bears the name of “Ottilia-Berg.”
Thus runs the simple legend which, even after the lapse of centuries, brings people to visit this famous spring, partly drawn thither by religious faith in the curative power of its waters, and partly attracted by the renowned beauty of the scenery which surrounds the spot where heaven-trusting Ottilia had thrown herself upon the intervention of Providence.
The Year Of Our Lord 1872.
There lurks a grim sarcasm in our title for those who, as the years grow and die out one after the other, ask each in turn: What have you brought us? what growth of good and lessening of evil? what new bond to link the scattered and divided masses of a humanity which should be common—but is not—more closely and firmly together? Have you brought us a step nearer heaven, that is, nearer the destiny which God marked out in the beginning for his creation, or thrown us backward? Years are the days of the world, of national life; and as each closes, even the superior minds which will not deign to believe in such old-fashioned words as a God, a heaven, or a hell, cannot fail to ask themselves the question, What has the world gained or lost in this its latest day?
We know that we shall be greeted at the outset by the old cry:—Catholics behind the age again: it is plain their religion was not made for the XIXth century; they will drift backward and sigh for the days that were, the gloom and the mist and the superstition of the “ages of faith”: they refuse to recognize the century, to understand it and its glorious enlightenment: they decline to march hand in hand with the great leaders, the apostles of the day, in politics, science, and religion—the Bismarcks, the Lanzas, the Mills, the Fawcetts, the Bradlaughs, the Döllingers, the Beechers, the Huxleys, the Buckles, the Darwins, the novelists, and the newspapers; the “enlightened” ideas of the age on marriage, education, civil government, and the rest. We humbly plead guilty to the greater portion of this charge. Modern enlightenment, as preached by the apostles above enumerated, and others such, possesses still too few charms to win us from our benighted ignorance. To us Utopia appears as far off to-day as when it grew upon the mind of Sir Thomas More in the shape of a dream too splendid to be realized; as far off as the fairyland which presented itself to our youthful imagination, where everybody was goody-goody, where all were kings and queens with crowns and sceptres, or lovely princesses and amiable princes, who loved each other with the most ardent nursery love, and with only one crabbed old fairy to spoil the scene, whose witcheries caused the amiable princes to undergo a certain amount of mild misfortunes, creating a corresponding amount of misery in the bosoms of the lovely princesses, till at length the old harridan was overridden to her shame and confusion, truth and virtue triumphed, everybody married everybody else, and there was peace and joy for ever after. To drop fancy: the story of the year would not seem to bring happier tidings of the great joy which was announced at the coming of Christ: of “peace on earth to men of good-will.” “Civilized” governments still hold fast by the good old rule,
That he may take who has the power,