XIV. How Otto Saw the Great Emperor,




FOREWORD.

Between the far away past history of the world, and that which
lies near to us; in the time when the wisdom of the ancient
times was dead and had passed away, and our own days of light
had not yet come, there lay a great black gulf in human history,
a gulf of ignorance, of superstition, of cruelty, and of
wickedness.

That time we call the dark or middle ages.

Few records remain to us of that dreadful period in our world's
history, and we only know of it through broken and disjointed
fragments that have been handed down to us through the
generations.

Yet, though the world's life then was so wicked and black, there
yet remained a few good men and women here and there (mostly in
peaceful and quiet monasteries, far from the thunder and the
glare of the worlds bloody battle), who knew the right and the
truth and lived according to what they knew; who preserved and
tenderly cared for the truths that the dear Christ taught, and
lived and died for in Palestine so long ago.

This tale that I am about to tell is of a little boy who lived