Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/186

202 There are, even in Switzerland, many such sufferers. This ought not to be the case there.

It was at Baden that the former princes of Hapsburg had their residence; and the ruins of their stronghold still elevate themselves above the town. It was here that the cruel Queen Agnes committed her atrocities to revenge the murder of her husband, King Albrecht; here where the wife of the innocent Von Wart knelt and prayed the pitiless woman, “by God's mercy at the Last Day!” to forgive him. For three days and three nights Von der Wart lay upon the rack; for three days and three nights his wife stood by his side, enduring his torture with him. He died asserting his innocence, and she, barefooted, went to Basle, where she died of a broken heart. Not far from this place is the great Convent of Königsfelden which was erected by Queen Agnes, and where, after having committed her wholesale murders, she lived, making pretensions to the honor of sainthood. For such saints there must be a reward in—hell.

At the town of Brugg, the Aar, the Reuss, and the Limmat unite their waters. The district is beautiful, and abounds with historical memories. The road runs through the Canton Argovie. It was with a melancholy feeling that I followed the course of the Aar through the fields. It flows broad and heavy, with sandy islands and banks, through green valleys, no longer resembling the rushing, living stream which I had beheld in its childhood, near its glacier cradle, and from whose waves I derived new vigor; now it was aged and weary, and allowed itself to go carelessly onward towards its change. Had it any presentiment that it