William of Malmesbury tells this story[1]: “I
have heard a person of the utmost veracity relate,
that one of the adversaries of Henry IV. (of Germany),
a weak and factious man, while reclining at
a banquet, was on a sudden so completely surrounded
by mice as to be unable to escape. So
great was the number of these little animals, that
there could scarcely be imagined more in a whole
province. It was in vain that they were attacked
with clubs and fragments of the benches which were
at hand; and though they were for a long time
assailed by all, yet they wreaked their deputed
curse on no one else; pursuing him only with their
teeth, and with a kind of dreadful squeaking. And
although he was carried out to sea about a javelin’s
cast by the servants, yet he could not by these
means escape their violence; for immediately so
great a multitude of mice took to the water, that
you would have sworn the sea was strewed with
chaff. But when they began to gnaw the planks
of the ship, and the water, rushing through the
chinks, threatened inevitable shipwreck, the servants
turned the vessel to the shore. The animals, then
also swimming close to the ship, landed first.
- ↑ William of Malmesbury, book iii., Bohn’s trans., p. 313.
