e,
By thousands they come, and by myriads and more,
Such numbers had never been heard of before,
Such a judgment had never been witnessed of yore.

Down on his knees the Bishop fell,
And faster and faster his beads did he tell,
As louder and louder, drawing near,
The gnawing of their teeth he could hear.

And in at the windows and in at the door,
And through the walls helter-skelter they pour,
And down through the ceiling, and up through the floor,
From the right and the left, from behind and before,
From within and without, from above and below,
And all at once to the Bishop they go.

They have whetted their teeth against the stones,
And now they pick the Bishop's bones;
They gnawed the flesh from every limb,
For they were sent to do judgment on him.

A Legend of Ehrenfels

Many other tales are told to illustrate Hatto's cruelty and treachery.
Facing the Mouse Tower, on the opposite bank of the Rhine, stands the
castle of Ehrenfels, the scene of another of his ignoble deeds.

Conrad, brother of the Emperor Ludwig, had, it is said, been seized and
imprisoned in Ehrenfels by the Franconian lord of that tower, Adalbert
by name. It was the fortune of war, and Ludwig in turn gathered a small
force and hastened to his brother's assistance. His attempts to storm
the castle, however, were vain; the stronghold and its garrison stood
firm. Ludwig was minded to give up the struggle for the time being, and
would have done so, indeed, but for the intervention of his friend and
adviser, Bishop Hatto.

"Leave him to me," said the crafty Churchman. "I know how to deal with
him."

Ludwig was curious to know how his adviser proposed to get the better of
Adalbert, whom he knew of old to be a man of courage and resource, but
ill-disposed toward the reigning monarch. So the Bishop unfolded
his scheme, to which Ludwig, with whom honour was not an outstanding
feature, gave his entire approval.

In pursuance of his design Hatto sallied forth unattended, and made his
way to the beleaguered fortress. Adalbert, himself a stranger to cunning
and trickery, hastened to admit the messenger, whose garb showed him to
be a priest, thinking him bound on an errand of peace. Hatto professed
the deepest sorrow at the quarrel between Ludwig and Adalbert.

"My son," said he solemnly, "it is not meet that you and the Emperor,
who once were friends, should trea