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These wondrous words, which now the river only murmured, had soon after been forced by some mystic power from the lips of the Druidesses in their prophetic exaltation and from the priests of Jupiter, as they consulted their auguries.
There was a Druid, who, in the act of sacrificing, was suddenly seized with inspiration, and dropping the bloody knife felt impelled to cry out: Miserere mei, Jesus! and yet Latin had until then been an unknown tongue among the Druids!
The nations stood expectant, waiting for the revelation of a new faith.
Soon a number of fugitives from Tolbiac, returning to the Rhine, produced consternation in all hearts by the announcement that Clovis, the king of the Franks, who had long been suspected of a secret understanding with Rome, had gone over to the god of the Christians, and that the god of the Christians was at that moment advancing at the head of ten legions of destroying angels.
When this news came, the rival religions laid aside their jealousy, and terrified by a common danger, joined hands to resist the invader. A general appeal was made not only by the followers of Odin to those of Jupiter, but also to the Northern gods, the Finnish gods, the Russian gods, and the Slavic gods. The danger was threatening to all alike, and they responded to the appeal and came to the Rhine. We cannot so rapidly pass over this vast Olympian assembly of gods, a poet’s dream, it may be, but a traditional dream, full of strange and striking splendor, which completes in a most unexpected manner the limited description we have tried to give of Northern Myths.
