CHAPTER XXIX.

Of perils by water.

ON one occasion when he had travelled to Strasburg, according to his custom, and was on 131his return home, he fell into a great stream of water, caused by an overflow of the Rhine, and he had with him the new little book which he had just finished, and with which the foul fiend was very wrath. As he was being swept helplessly along by the current, at the peril of his life, the faithful God so ordered it, that at that very moment there came up by chance from Strasburg a young newly-made Prussian knight, who venturing into the turbid and raging water saved the Servitor and his companion from a miser able death.

Once upon a time he set forth on a journey under obedience, when the weather was cold; and after travelling on a carriage the whole day through until evening without food in the cold wind and frosty weather, he arrived at a troubled piece of water, which was deep and rapid, owing to the great quantity of rain which had fallen. The man who drove him went too near the bank through carelessness, and the carriage turning over, the brother was shot out of it and fell into the water on his back. The carriage fell over on him, so that he could not turn himself in the water either to this side or to that, nor yet help himself at all; and in this state he and the carriage floated down for some distance towards a 132mill. The driver and others ran thither, and jumping into the water seized hold of him, and tried their best to draw him out; but the heavy carnage lay upon him and pressed him down. When at last they, succeeded with great labour in lifting the carriage off him, they drew him out to land dripping wet, and he had not been long out of the water before his clothes froze upon him from the excessive cold. He began to tremble with cold, so that his teeth chattered, and in this miserable plight he stood still for a long time, and then looking up to God exclaimed:—O my God, what am I to do? what course am I to adopt? It is late and night is at hand, and if there is no town or village near, where I can warm and refresh myself, I must die; and what a wretched kind of death this will be! He looked around on all sides, until at last he espied far away upon a hill a very small hamlet. He crawled thither, all wet and frozen as he was, and by the time he reached it night had set in. He went up and down begging for shelter in God’s name; but he was driven away from the houses, and no one would take pity on him. Then the frost and fatigue began to attack his heart, and put him in fear for his life; upon which he cried with a loud voice to God:—133O Lord! O Lord! it would have been better hadst Thou let me be drowned, for then there would have been an end of it, instead of my being frozen to death in this street.

These words of lamentation were overheard by a peasant, who had before this driven him away, but who now touched with compassion took him in his arms and brought him into his house, where he spent a miserable night.