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. Thus the wretch, set on shore, and soon after entirely gnawed in pieces, satiated the dreadful hunger of the mice.
I deem this the less wonderful, because it is well known, that in Asia, if a leopard bite any person, a party of mice approach directly, to discharge their urine on the wounded man; and that a filthy deluge of their water attends his death; but if, by the care of servants driving them off, the destruction can be avoided during nine days; then medical assistance, if called in, may be of service. My informant had seen a person wounded after this manner, who, despairing of safety on shore, proceeded to sea, and lay at anchor; when immediately more than a thousand mice swam out, wonderful to relate, in the rinds of pomegranates, the insides of which they had eaten; but they were disowned through the loud shouting of the sailors. "For the Creator of all things has made nothing destitute of sagacity; nor any pest without its remedy."
During this emperor's reign flourished Marianus Scotus,[1] first a monk of Fulda, afterwards a recluse at Mentz, who, by renouncing the present life, secured the happiness of that which is to come. During his long continued leisure, he examined the writers on Chronology, and discovered the disagreement of the cycles of Dionysius the Little with the evangelical computation. Wherefore reckoning every year from the beginning of the world, he added twenty-two, which were wanting, to the above mentioned cycles; but he had few, or no followers of his opinion. Wherefore I am often led to wonder, why such unhappiness should
- ↑ Marianus was bom in Ireland a.d. 1028, and was compiler of a celebrated chronicle, which is the basis of Florence of Worcester. His imagined correction of Dionysius is founded in error.
