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+The Project Gutenberg EBook Margery, by Georg Ebers, Volume 1.
+#113 in our series by Georg Ebers
+
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+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
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+**EBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers*****
+
+
+Title: Margery, Volume 1.
+
+Author: Georg Ebers
+
+Release Date: April, 2004  [EBook #5552]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on August 2, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARGERY, BY GEORG EBERS, V1 ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
+file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an
+entire meal of them.  D.W.]
+
+
+
+
+
+MARGERY
+
+By Georg Ebers
+
+Volume 1.
+
+
+
+
+TRANSLATOR'S NOTE:
+
+In translating what is supposed to be a transcript into modern German of
+the language of Nuremberg in the fifteenth century, I have made no
+attempt to imitate English phraseology of the same date. The difficulty
+would in fact be insuperable to the writer and the annoyance to the
+reader almost equally great.
+
+I have merely endeavored to avoid essentially modern words and forms of
+speech.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION:
+
+"PIETRO GIUSTINIANI, merchant, of Venice."  This was the signature
+affixed to his receipt by the little antiquary in the city of St. Mark,
+from whom I purchased a few stitched sheets of manuscript.  What a name
+and title!
+
+As I remarked on the splendor of his ancestry he slapped his pocket, and
+exclaimed, half in pride and half in lamentation:
+
+"Yes, they had plenty of money; but what has become of it?"
+
+"And have you no record of their deeds?"  I asked the little man, who
+himself wore a moustache with stiff military points to it.
+
+"Their deeds!"  he echoed scornfully.  "I wish they had been less zealous
+in their pursuit of fame and had managed their money matters better!--
+Poor child!"
+
+And he pointed to little Marietta who was playing among the old books,
+and with whom I had already struck up a friendship.  She this day
+displayed some strange appendage in the lobes of her ears, which on
+closer examination I found to be a twist of thread.
+
+The child's pretty dark head was lying confidentially against my arm and
+as, with my fingers, I felt this singular ornament, I heard, from behind
+the little desk at the end of the counter, her mother's shrill voice in
+complaining accents: "Aye, Sir, it is a shame in a family which has given
+three saints to the Church--Saint Nicholas, Saint Anna, and Saint
+Eufemia, all three Giustinianis as you know--in a family whose sons have
+more than once worn a cardinal's hat--that a mother, Sir, should be
+compelled to let her own child--But you are fond of the little one, Sir,
+as every one is hereabout.  Heh, Marietta!  What would you say if the
+gentleman were to give you a pair of ear-rings, now; real gold ear-rings
+I mean?  Thread for ear-rings, Sir, in the ears of a Giustiniani!  It is
+absurd, preposterous, monstrous; and a right-thinking gentleman like you,
+Sir, will never deny that."
+
+How could I neglect such a hint; and when I had gratified the antiquary's
+wife, I could reflect with some pride that I might esteem myself a
+benefactor to a family which boasted of its descent from the Emperor
+Justinian, which had been called the 'Fabia gens' of Venice, and, in its
+day had given to the Republic great generals, far-seeing statesmen, and
+admirable scholars.
+
+When, at length, I had to quit the city and took leave of the curiosity-
+dealer, he pressed my hand with heartfelt regret; and though the Signora
+Giustiniani, as she pocketed a tolerably thick bundle of paper money,
+looked at me with that kindly pity which a good woman is always ready to
+bestow on the inexperienced, especially when they are young, that, no
+doubt, was because the manuscript I had acquired bore such a dilapidated
+appearance.  The margins of the thick old Nuremberg paper were eaten into
+by mice and insects, in many places black patches like tinder dropped
+away from the yellow pages; indeed, many passages of the once clear
+writing had so utterly faded that I scarcely hoped to see them made
+legible again by the chemist's art.  However, the contents of the
+document were so interesting and remarkable, so unique in relation to the
+time when it was written, that they irresistibly riveted my attention,
+and in studying them I turned half the night into day.  There were nine
+separate parts.  All, except the very last one, were in the same hand,
+and they seemed to have formed a single book before they were torn
+asunder.  The cover and title-page were lost, but at the head of the
+first page these words were written in large letters: "The Book of my
+Life."  Then followed a long passage in crude verse, very much to this
+effect.
+
+              "What we behold with waking Eye
+               Can, to our judgment, never lie,
+               And what through Sense and Sight we gain.
+               Becometh part of Soul and Brain.
+               Look round the World in which you dwell
+               Nor, Snail-like, live within your Shell;
+               And if you see His World aright
+               The Lord shall grant you double Sight.
+               For, though your Mind and Soul be small,
+               If you but open them to all
+               The great wide World, they will expand
+               Those glorious Things to understand.
+               When Heart and Brain are great with Love
+               Man is most like the Lord above.
+               Look up to Him with patient Eye
+               Not on your own Infirmity.
+               In pious Trust yourself forget
+               For others only toil and fret,
+               Since all we do for fellow Men
+               With right good Will, shall be our Gain.
+               What if the Folk should call you Fool
+               Care not, but act by Virtue's Rule,
+               Contempt and Curses let them fling,
+               God's Blessing shields you from their Sting.
+               Grey is my Head but young my Heart;
+               In Nuremberg, ere I depart,
+               Children and Grandchildren, for you
+               I write this Book, and it is true."
+
+                                        MARGERY SCHOPPER.
+
+
+Below the verses the text of the narrative began with these words: "In
+the yere of our Lord M/CCCC/lx/VI dyd I begynne to wrtre in thys lytel
+Boke thys storie of my lyf, as I haue lyued it."
+
+It was in her sixty-second year that the writer had first begun to note
+down her reminiscences.  This becomes clear as we go on, but it may be
+gathered from the first lines on the second page which begins thus:
+
+     "I, Margery Schopper, was borne in the yere of our Lord M/CCCC/IV on
+     a Twesday after 'Palmarum' Sonday, at foure houris after mydnyght.
+     Myn uncle Kristan Pfinzing was god sib to me in my chrystening.  My
+     fader, God assoyle his soul, was Franz Schopper, iclyped the Singer.
+     He dyed on a Monday after 'Laetare'--[The fourth Sunday in Lent.]--
+     Sonday M/CCCC/IV.  And he hadde to wyf Kristine Peheym whyche was my
+     moder.  Also she bare to hym my brethren Herdegen and Kunz Schopper.
+     My moder dyed in the vigil of Seint Kateryn M/CCCC/V.  Thus was I
+     refte of my moder whyle yet a babe; also the Lord broughte sorwe
+     upon me in that of hys grace He callyd my fader out of thys worlde
+     before that ever I sawe the lyght of dai."
+
+These few lines, which I read in the little antiquary's shop, betrayed me
+to my ruin; for, in my delight at finding the daily journal of a German
+housewife of the beginning of the fifteenth century my heart overflowed;
+forgetting all prudence I laughed aloud, exclaiming "splendid,"
+"wonderful," "what a treasure!"  But it would have been beyond all human
+power to stand speechless, for, as I read on, I found things which far
+exceeded my fondest expectations.  The writer of these pages had not been
+content, like the other chroniclers of her time and of her native town-
+such as Ulman Stromer, Andres Tucher and their fellows--to register
+notable facts without any connection, the family affairs, items of
+expenditure and mercantile measures of her day; she had plainly and
+candidly recorded everything that had happened to her from her childhood
+to the close of her life.  This Margery had inherited some of her
+father's artistic gifts; he is mentioned in Ulman Stromer's famous
+chronicle, where he is spoken of as "the Singer."  It was to her mother,
+however, that she owed her bold spirit, for she was a Behaim, cousin to
+the famous traveller Behaim of Schwarzbach, whose mother is known to have
+been one of the Schopper family, daughter to Herdegen Schopper.
+
+In the course of a week I had not merely read the manuscript, but had
+copied a great deal of what seemed to me best worth preservation,
+including the verses.  I subsequently had good reason to be glad that I
+had taken so much pains, though travelling about at the time; for a cruel
+disaster befel the trunk in which the manuscript was packed, with other
+books and a few treasures, and which I had sent home by sea.  The ship
+conveying them was stranded at the mouth of the Elbe and my precious
+manuscript perished miserably in the wreck.
+
+The nine stitched sheets, of which the last was written by the hand of
+Margery Schopper's younger brother, had found their way to Venice--as was
+recorded on the last page--in the possession of Margery's great-grandson,
+who represented the great mercantile house of Im Hoff on the Fondaco, and
+who ultimately died in the City of St. Mark.  When that famous firm was
+broken up the papers were separated from their cover and had finally
+fallen into the hands of the curiosity dealer of whom I bought them.  And
+after surviving travels on land, risk of fire, the ravages of worms and
+the ruthlessness of man for four centuries, they finally fell a prey to
+the destructive fury of the waves; but my memory served me well as to the
+contents, and at my bidding was at once ready to aid me in restoring the
+narrative I had read.  The copied portions were a valuable aid, and
+imagination was able to fill the gaps; and though it failed, no doubt, to
+reproduce Margery Schopper's memoirs phrase for phrase and word for word,
+I have on the whole succeeded in transcribing with considerable
+exactitude all that she herself had thought worthy to be rescued from
+oblivion.  Moreover I have avoided the repetition of the mode of talk in
+the fifteenth century, when German was barely commencing to be used as a
+written language, since scholars, writers, and men of letters always
+chose the Latin tongue for any great or elegant intellectual work.  The
+narrator's expressions would only be intelligible to a select few, and,
+I should have done my Margery injustice, had I left the ideas and
+descriptions, whose meaning I thoroughly understood, in the clumsy form
+she had given them.  The language of her day is a mirror whose uneven
+surface might easily reflect the fairest picture in blurred or distorted
+out lines to modern eyes.  Much, indeed which most attracted me in her
+descriptions will have lost its peculiar charm in mine; as to whether I
+have always supplemented her correctly, that must remain an open
+question.
+
+I have endeavored to throw myself into the mind and spirit of my Margery
+and repeat her tale with occasional amplification, in a familiar style,
+yet with such a choice of words as seems suitable to the date of her
+narrative.  Thus I have perpetuated all that she strove to record for her
+descendants out of her warm heart and eager brain; though often in mere
+outline and broken sentences, still, in the language of her time and of
+her native province.
+
+
+
+
+MARGERY
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+I, MARGERY SCHOPPER, was born in the year of our Lord 1404, on the
+Tuesday after Palm Sunday.  My uncle Christan Pfinzing of the Burg, a
+widower whose wife had been a Schopper, held me at the font.  My father,
+God have his soul, was Franz Schopper, known as Franz the Singer.  He
+died in the night of the Monday after Laetare Sunday in 1404, and his
+wife my mother, God rest her, whose name was Christine, was born a
+Behaim; she had brought him my two brothers Herdegen and Kunz, and she
+died on the eve of Saint Catharine's day 1404; so that I lost my mother
+while I was but a babe, and God dealt hardly with me also in taking my
+father to Himself in His mercy, before I ever saw the light.
+
+Instead of a loving father, such as other children have, I had only a
+grave in the churchyard, and the good report of him given by such as had
+known him; and by their account he must have been a right merry and
+lovable soul, and a good man of business both in his own affairs and in
+those pertaining to the city.  He was called "the Singer" because, even
+when he was a member of the town-council, he could sing sweetly and
+worthily to the lute.  This art he learned in Lombardy, where he had been
+living at Padua to study the law there; and they say that among those
+outlandish folk his music brought him a rich reward in the love of the
+Italian ladies and damsels.  He was a well-favored man, of goodly stature
+and pleasing to look upon, as my brother Herdegen his oldest son bears
+witness, since it is commonly said that he is the living image of his
+blessed father; and I, who am now an old woman, may freely confess that
+I have seldom seen a man whose blue eyes shone more brightly beneath his
+brow, or whose golden hair curled thicker over his neck and shoulders
+than my brother's in the high day of his happy youth.
+
+He was born at Eastertide, and the Almighty blessed him with a happy
+temper such as he bestows only on a Sunday-child.  He, too, was skilled
+in the art of singing, and as my other brother, my playmate Kunz, had
+also a liking for music and song, there was ever a piping and playing in
+our orphaned and motherless house, as if it were a nest of mirthful
+grasshoppers, and more childlike gladness and happy merriment reigned
+there than in many another house that rejoices in the presence of father
+and mother.  And I have ever been truly thankful to the Almighty that
+it was so; for as I have often seen, the life of children who lack a
+mother's love is like a day when the sun is hidden by storm-clouds.
+But the merciful God, who laid his hand on our mother's heart, filled
+that of another woman with a treasure of love towards me and my brothers.
+
+Our cousin Maud, a childless widow, took upon herself to care for us.
+As a maid, and before she had married her departed husband, she had been
+in love with my father, and then had looked up to my mother as a saint
+from Heaven, so she could have no greater joy than to tell us tales about
+our parents; and when she did so her eyes would be full of tears, and as
+every word came straight from her heart it found its way straight to
+ours; and as we three sat round, listening to her, besides her own two
+eyes there were soon six more wet enough to need a handkerchief.
+
+Her gait was heavy and awkward, and her face seemed as though it had been
+hewn out of coarse wood, so that it was a proper face to frighten
+children; even when she was young they said that her appearance was too
+like a man and devoid of charms, and for that reason my father never
+heeded her love for him; but her eyes were like open windows, and out of
+them looked everything that was good and kind and loving and true, like
+angels within.  For the sake of those eyes you forgot all else; all that
+was rough in her, and her wide nose with the deep dent just in the
+middle, and such hair on her lip as many a young stripling might envy
+her.
+
+And Sebald Kresz knew very well what he was about when he took to wife
+Maud Im Hoff when he was between sixty and seventy years of age; and she
+had nothing to look forward to in life as she stood at the altar with
+him, but to play the part of nurse to a sickly perverse old man.  But to
+Maud it seemed as fair a lot to take care of a fellow-creature as it is
+to many another to be nursed and cherished; and it was the reward of her
+faithful care that she could keep the old man from the clutch of Death
+for full ten years longer.  After his decease she was left a well-to-do
+widow; but instead of taking thought for herself she at once entered on a
+life of fresh care, for she undertook the duty of filling the place of
+mother to us three orphans.
+
+As I grew up she would often instruct me in her kind voice, which was as
+deep as the bass pipe of an organ, that she had set three aims before her
+in bringing us up, namely: to make us good and Godfearing; to teach us to
+agree among ourselves so that each should be ready to give everything up
+to the others; and to make our young days as happy as possible.  How far
+she succeeded in the first I leave to others to judge; but a more united
+family than we ever were I should like any man to show me, and because it
+was evident from a hundred small tokens how closely we clung together
+folks used to speak of us as "the three links," especially as the arms
+borne by the Schoppers display three rings linked to form a chain.
+
+As for myself, I was the youngest and smallest of the three links, and
+yet I was the middle one; for if ever it fell that Herdegen and Kunz had
+done one thing or another which led them to disagree and avoid or defy
+each other, they always came together again by seeking me and through my
+means.  But though I thus sometimes acted as peacemaker it is no credit
+to me, since I did not bring them together out of any virtue or
+praiseworthy intent, but simply because I could not bear to stand alone,
+or with only one ring linked to me.
+
+Alas! how far behind me lies the bright, happy youth of which I now
+write!  I have reached the top of life's hill, nay, I have long since
+overstepped the ridge; and, as I look back and think of all I have seen
+and known, it is not to the end that I may get wisdom for myself whereby
+to do better as I live longer.  My old bones are stiff and set; it would
+be vain now to try to bend them.  No, I write this little book for my own
+pleasure, and to be of use and comfort to my children and grandchildren.
+May they avoid the rocks on which I have bruised my feet, and where I
+have walked firmly on may they take example by an old woman's brave
+spirit, though I have learned in a thousand ways that no man gains profit
+by any experience other than his own.
+
+So I will begin at the beginning.
+
+I could find much to tell of my happy childhood, for then everything
+seems new; but it profits not to tell of what every one has known in his
+own life, and what more can a Nuremberg child have to say of her early
+growth and school life than ever another.  The blades in one field and
+the trees in one wood share the same lot without any favour.  It is true
+that in many ways I was unlike other children; for my cousin Maud would
+often say that I would not abide rule as beseems a maid, and Herdegen's
+lament that I was not born a boy still sounds in my ears when I call to
+mind our wild games.  Any one who knows the window on the first floor,
+at the back of our house, from which I would jump into the courtyard to
+do as my brothers did, would be fairly frightened, and think it a wonder
+that I came out of it with whole bones; but yet I was not always minded
+to riot with the boys, and from my tenderest years I was a very
+thoughtful little maid.  But there were things; in my young life very apt
+to sharpen my wits.
+
+We Schoppers are nearly allied with every worshipful family in the town,
+or of a rank to sit in the council and bear a coat of arms; these being,
+in fact, in Nuremberg, the class answering to the families of the
+Signoria in Venice, whose names are enrolled in the Libro d'Oro.  What
+the Barberighi, the Foscari, the Grimaldi, the Giustiniani and the like,
+are there, the families of Stromer, Behaim, Im Hoff, Tucher, Kresz,
+Baumgartner, Pfinzing, Pukheimer, Holzschuher, and so forth, are with us;
+and the Schoppers certainly do not rank lowest on the list.  We who hold
+ourselves entitled to bear arms, to ride in tournaments, and take office
+in the Church, and who have a right to call ourselves nobles and
+patricians, are all more or less kith and kin.  Wherever in Nuremberg
+there was a fine house we could find there an uncle and aunt, cousins
+and kinsmen, or at least godparents, and good friends of our deceased
+parents.  Wherever one of them might chance to meet us, even if it were
+in the street, he would say: "Poor little orphans!  God be good to the
+fatherless!" and tears would sparkle in the eyes of many a kindhearted
+woman.  Even the gentlemen of the Council--for most of the elders of our
+friends were members of it--would stroke my fair hair and look at me as
+pitifully as though I were some poor sinner for whom there could be no
+mercy in the eyes of the judges of a court of justice.
+
+Why was it that men deemed me so unfortunate when I knew no sorrow and my
+heart was as gay as a singing bird?  I could not ask cousin Maud, for she
+was sorely troubled if I had but a finger-ache, and how could I tell her
+that I was such a miserable creature in the eyes of other folks?  But I
+presently found out for myself why and wherefore they pitied me; for
+seven who called me fatherless, seventy would speak of me as motherless
+when they addressed me with pity.  Our misfortune was that we had no
+mother.  But was there not Cousin Maud, and was not she as good as any
+mother?  To be sure she was only a cousin, and she must lack something of
+what a real mother feels.
+
+And though I was but a heedless, foolish child I kept my eyes open and
+began to look about me.  I took no one into the secret but my brothers,
+and though my elder brother chid me, and bid me only be thankful to our
+cousin for all her goodness, I nevertheless began to watch and learn.
+
+There were a number of children at the Stromers' house--the Golden Rose
+was its name--and they were still happy in having their mother.  She was
+a very cheerful young woman, as plump as a cherry, and pink and white
+like blood on snow; and she never fixed her gaze on me as others did,
+but would frolic with me or scold me sharply when I did any wrong.
+At the Muffels, on the contrary, the mistress was dead, and the master
+had not long after brought home another mother to his little ones, a
+stepmother, Susan, who was my maid, was wont to call her; and such a
+mother was no more a real mother than our good cousin--I knew that much
+from the fairy tales to which I was ever ready to hearken.  But I saw
+this very stepmother wash and dress little Elsie, her husband's youngest
+babe and not her own, and lull her till she fell asleep; and she did it
+right tenderly, and quite as she ought.  And then, when the child was
+asleep she kissed it, too, on its brow and cheeks.
+
+And yet Mistress Stromer, of the Golden-Rose House, did differently; for
+when she took little Clare that was her own babe out of the water, and
+laid it on warm clouts on the swaddling board, she buried her face in the
+sweet, soft flesh, and kissed the whole of its little body all over,
+before and behind, from head to foot, as if it were all one sweet, rosy
+mouth; and they both laughed with hearty, loving merriment, as the mother
+pressed her lips against the babe's white, clean skin and trumpeted till
+the room rang, or clasped it, wrapped in napkins to her warm breast, as
+if she could hug it to death.  And she broke into a loud, strange laugh,
+and cried as she fondled it: "My treasure, my darling, my God-sent jewel!
+My own, my own--I could eat thee!"
+
+No, Mistress Muffel never behaved so to Elsie, her husband's babe.
+Notwithstanding I knew right well that Cousin Maud had been just as fond
+of me as Dame Stromer of her own babes, and so far our cousin was no way
+different from a real mother.  And I said as much to myself, when I laid
+me down to sleep in my little white bed at night, and my cousin came and
+folded her hands as I folded mine and, after we had said the prayers for
+the Angelus together, as we did every evening, she laid her head by the
+side of mine, and pressed my baby face to her own big face.  I liked this
+well enough, and I whispered in her ear: "Tell me, Cousin Maud, are you
+not my real, true mother?"
+
+And she hastily replied, "In my heart I am, most truly; and you are a
+very lucky maid, my Margery, for instead of only one mother you have two:
+me, here below, to care for you and foster you, and the other up among
+the angels above, looking down on you and beseeching the all-gracious
+Virgin who is so nigh to her, to keep your little heart pure, and to
+preserve you from all ill; nay, perhaps she herself is wearing a glory
+and a heavenly crown.  Look at her face."  And Cousin Maud held up the
+lamp so that the light fell on a large picture.  My eyes beheld the
+lovely portrait in front of me, and meseemed it looked at me with a deep
+gaze and stretched out loving arms to me.  I sat up in my bed; the
+feelings which filled my little heart overflowed my lips, and I said in a
+whisper: "Oh, Cousin Maud!  Surely my mammy might kiss me for once, and
+fondle me as Mistress Stromer does her little Clare."
+
+Cousin Maud set the lamp on the table, and without a word she lifted me
+out of bed and held me up quite close to the face of the picture; and I
+understood.  My lips softly touched the red lips on the canvas; and, as I
+was all the happier, I fancied that my mother in Heaven must be glad too.
+
+Then my cousin sighed: "Well, well!"  and murmured other words to
+herself; she laid me in the bed again, tucked the coverlet tightly round
+me as I loved to have it, gave me another kiss, waited till I had settled
+my head on the pillow, and whispered: "Now go to sleep and dream of your
+sainted mother."
+
+She quitted the room; but she had left the lamp, and as soon as I was
+alone I looked once more at the picture, which showed me my mother in
+right goodly array.  She had a rose on her breast, her golden fillet
+looked like the crown of the Queen of Heaven, and in her robe of rich,
+stiff brocade she was like some great Saint.  But what seemed to me more
+heavenly than all the rest was her rose and white young face, and the
+sweet mouth which I had touched with my lips.  Oh if I had but once had
+the happiness of kissing that mouth in life!  A sudden feeling glowed
+in my heart, and an inward voice told me that a thousand kisses
+from Cousin Maud would never be worth one single kiss from that lovely
+young mother, and that I had indeed lost almost as much as my pitying
+friends had said.  And I could not help sorrowing, weeping for a long
+time; I felt as though I had lost just what was best and dearest, and
+for the first time I saw that my good cousin was right ugly as other
+folks said, and my silly little head conceived that a real mother must be
+fair to look upon, and that however kind any one else might be she could
+never be so gracious and lovable.
+
+And so I fell asleep; and in my dreams the picture came towards me out of
+the frame and took me in her arms as Madonna takes her Holy Child, and
+looked at me with a gaze as if all the love on earth had met in those
+eyes.  I threw my arms round her neck and waited for her to fondle and
+play with me like Mistress Stromer with her little Clare; but she gently
+and sadly shook her head with the golden crownlet, and went up to Cousin
+Maud and set me in her lap.
+
+"I have never forgot that dream, and often in my prayers have I lifted up
+my heart to my sainted mother, and cried to her as to the blessed Virgin
+and Saint Margaret, my name-saint; and how often she has heard me and
+rescued me in need and jeopardy!  As to my cousin, she was ever dearer to
+me from that night; for had not my own mother given me to her, and when
+folks looked at me pitifully and bewailed my lot, I could laugh in my
+heart and think: 'If only you knew!  Your children have only one mother,
+but we have two; and our own real mother is prettier than any one's,
+while the other, for all that she is so ugly, is the best.'"
+
+It was the compassion of folks that first led me to such thoughts, and as
+I grew older I began to deem that their pity had done little good to my
+young soul.  Friends are ever at hand to comfort every job; but few are
+they who come to share his heaviness, all the more so because all men
+take pleasure in comparing their own fair lot with the evil lot of
+others.  Compassion--and I am the last to deny it--is a noble and right
+healing grace; but those who are so ready to extend it should be cautious
+how they do so, especially in the case of a child, for a child is like a
+sapling which needs light, and those who darken the sun that shines on it
+sin against it, and hinder its growth.  Instead of bewailing it, make it
+glad; that is the comfort that befits it.
+
+I felt I had discovered a great and important secret and I was eager to
+make our sainted mother known to my brothers; but they had found her
+already without any aid from their little sister.  I told first one and
+then the other all that stirred within me, and when I spoke to Herdegen,
+the elder, I saw at once that it was nothing new to him.  Kunz, the
+younger, I found in the swing; he flew so high that I thought he would
+fling himself out, and I cried to him to stop a minute; but, as he
+clutched the rope tighter and pulled himself together to stand firm on
+the board, he cried: "Leave me now, Margery; I want to go up, up; up to
+Heaven--up to where mother is!"
+
+That was enough for me; and from that hour we often spoke together of our
+sainted mother, and Cousin Maud took care that we should likewise keep
+our father in mind.  She had his portrait--as she had had my mother's--
+brought from the great dining-room, where it had hung, into the large
+children's room where she slept with me.  And this picture, too, left
+its mark on my after-life; for when I had the measles, and Master Paul
+Rieter, the town physician and our doctor, came to see me, he stayed a
+long time, as though he could not bear to depart, standing in front of
+the portrait; and when he turned to me again, his face was quite red with
+sorrowful feeling--for he had been a favorite friend of my father, at
+Padua--and he exclaimed: "What a fortunate child art thou, little
+Margery!"
+
+I must have looked at him puzzled enough, for no one had ever esteemed me
+fortunate, unless it were Cousin Maud or the Waldstromers in the forest;
+and Master Paul must have observed my amazement, for he went on.  "Yea,
+a happy child art thou; for so are all babes, maids or boys, who come
+into the world after their father's death."  As I gazed into his face,
+no less astonished than before, he laid the gold knob of his cane against
+his nose and said: "Remember, little simpleton, the good God would not be
+what he is, would not be a man of honor--God forgive the words--if he did
+not take a babe whom He had robbed of its father before it had seen the
+light or had one proof of his love under His own special care.  Mark what
+I say, child.  Is it a small thing to be the ward of a guardian who is
+not only Almighty but true above all truth?"  And those words have
+followed me through all my life till this very hour.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Thus passed our childhood, as I have already said, in very great
+happiness; and by the time that my brothers had left the leading strings
+far behind them, and were studying their 'Donatus', Cousin Maud was
+teaching me to read and write, and that with much mirth and the most
+frolicsome ways.  For instance, she would stamp four copies of each
+letter out of sweet honey-cakes, and when I knew them well she gave me
+these tiny little A. B. C. cakes, and one I ate myself, and gave the
+others to my brothers, or Susan, or my cousin.  Often I put them in my
+satchel to carry them into the woods with me, and give them to my Cousin
+Gotz's favorite hound or his cross-beak; for he himself did not care for
+sweets.  I shall have many things to tell of him and the forest; even
+when I was very small it was my greatest joy to be told that we were
+going to the woods, for there dwelt the dearest and most faithful of all
+our kinsmen: my uncle Waldstromer and his family.  The stately hunting-
+lodge in which he dwelt as head forester of the Lorenzerwald in the
+service of the Emperor and of our town, had greater joys for me than any
+other, since not only were there the woods with all their delights and
+wonders, but also, besides many hounds, a number of strange beasts, and
+other pastimes such as a town child knows little of.
+
+But what I most loved was the only son of my uncle and aunt Waldstromer,
+for whose dog I kept my cake letters; for though Cousin Gotz was older
+than I by eleven years, he nevertheless did not scorn me, but whenever I
+asked him to show me this or that, or teach me some light woodland craft,
+he would leave his elders to please me.
+
+When I was six years old I went to the forest one day in a scarlet velvet
+hood, and after that he ever called me his little "Red riding-hood," and
+I liked to be called so; and of all the boys and lads I ever met among my
+brothers' friends or others I deemed none could compare with Gotz; my
+guileless heart was so wholly his that I always mentioned his name in my
+little prayers.
+
+Till I was nine we had gone out into the forest three or four times in
+each year to pass some weeks; but after this I was sent to school, and
+as Cousin Maud took it much to heart, because she knew that my father had
+set great store by good learning, we paid such visits more rarely; and
+indeed, the strict mistress who ruled my teaching would never have
+allowed me to break through my learning for pastime's sake.
+
+Sister Margaret, commonly called the Carthusian nun, was the name of the
+singular woman who was chosen to be my teacher.  She was at once the most
+pious and learned soul living; she was Prioress of a Carthusian nunnery
+and had written ten large choirbooks, besides others.  Though the rule of
+her order forbade discourse, she was permitted to teach.
+
+Oh, how I trembled when Cousin Maud first took me to the convent.
+
+As a rule my tongue was never still, unless it were when Herdegen sang to
+me, or thought aloud, telling me his dreams of what he would do when he
+had risen to be chancellor, or captain-in chief of the Imperial army, and
+had found a count's or a prince's daughter to carry home to his grand
+castle.  Besides, the wild wood was a second home to me, and now I was
+shut up in a convent where the silence about me crushed me like a too
+tight bodice.  The walls of the vast antechamber, where I was left to
+wait, were covered with various texts in Latin, and several times
+repeated were these words under a skull.
+
+"Bitter as it is to live a Carthusian, it is right sweet to die one."
+
+There was a crucifix in a shrine, and so much bright red blood flowed
+from the Crown of Thorns and the Wounds that the Sacred Body was half
+covered with it, and I was sore afraid at the sight--oh I can find no
+words for it!  And all the while one nun after another glided through the
+chamber in silence, and with bowed head, her arms folded, and never so
+much as lifting an eye to look at me.
+
+It was in May; the day was fine and pleasant, but I began to shiver,
+and I felt as if the Spring had bloomed and gone, and I had suddenly
+forgotten how to laugh and be glad.  Presently a cat stole in, leapt on
+to the bench where I sat, and arched her back to rub up against me; but I
+drew away, albeit I commonly laved to play with animals; for it glared at
+me strangely with its green eyes, and I had a sudden fear that it would
+turn into a werewolf and do me a hurt.
+
+At length the door opened, and a woman in nun's weeds came in with my
+cousin; she was the taller by a head.  I had never seen so tall a woman,
+but the nun was very thin, too, and her shoulders scarce broader than my
+own.  Ere long, indeed, she stooped a good deal, and as time went on I
+saw her ever with her back bent and her head bowed.  They said she had
+some hurt of the back-bone, and that she had taken this bent shape from
+writing, which she always did at night.
+
+At first I dared not look up in her face, for my cousin had told me that
+with her I must be very diligent, that idleness never escaped her keen
+eyes; and Gotz Waldstromer knew the meaning of the Latin motto with which
+she began all her writings: "Beware lest Satan find thee idle!"  These
+words flashed through my mind at this moment; I felt her eye fixed upon
+me, and I started as she laid her cold, thin fingers on my brow and
+firmly, but not ungently, made me lift my drooping head.  I raised my
+eyes, and how glad I was when in her pale, thin face I saw nothing but
+true, sweet good will.
+
+She asked me in a low, clear voice, though hardly above a whisper, how
+old I was, what was my name, and what I had learnt already.  She spoke in
+brief sentences, not a word too little or too many; and she ever set me
+my tasks in the same manner; for though, by a dispensation, she might
+speak, she ever bore in mind that at the Last Day we shall be called to
+account for every word we utter.
+
+At last she spoke of my sainted parents, but she only said: "Thy father
+and mother behold thee ever; therefore be diligent in school that they
+may rejoice in thee.--To-morrow and every morning at seven."  Then she
+kissed me gently on my head, bowed to my cousin without a word, and
+turned her back upon us.  But afterwards, as I walked on in the open air
+glad to be moving, and saw the blue sky and the green meadows once more,
+and heard the birds sing and the children at play, I felt as it were a
+load lifted from my breast; but I likewise felt the tall, silent nun's
+kiss, and as if she had given me something which did me honor.
+
+Next morning I went to school for the first time; and whereas it is
+commonly the part of a child's godparents only to send it parcels of
+sweetmeats when it goes to school, I had many from various kinsfolks and
+other of our friends, because they pitied me as a hapless orphan.
+
+I thought more of my riches, and how to dispense them, than of school and
+tasks; and as my cousin would only put one parcel into my little satchel
+I stuffed another--quite a little one, sent me by rich mistress Grosz,
+with a better kind of sweeties--into the wallet which hung from my
+girdle.
+
+On the way I looked about at the folks to see if they observed how I had
+got on, and my little heart beat fast as I met my cousin Gotz in front of
+Master Pernhart's brass-smithy.  He had come from the forest to live in
+the town, that he might learn book-keeping under the tax-gatherers.  We
+greeted each other merrily, and he pulled my plait of hair and went on
+his way, while I felt as if this meeting had brought me good luck indeed.
+
+In school of course I had to forget such follies at once; for among
+Sister Margaret's sixteen scholars I was far below most of them, not,
+indeed in stature, for I was well-grown for my years, but in age and
+learning and this I was to discover before the first hour was past.
+
+Fifteen of us were of the great city families, and this day, being the
+first day of the school-term, we were all neatly clad in fine woollen
+stuffs of Florence or of Flanders make, and colored knitted hose.  We all
+had fine lace ruffs round the cuffs of our tight sleeves and the square
+cut fronts of our bodices; each little maid wore a silken ribbon to tie
+her plaits, and almost all had gold rings in her ears and a gold pin at
+her breast or in her girdle.  Only one was in a simple garb, unlike the
+others, and she, notwithstanding her weed was clean and fitting, was
+arrayed in poor, grey home spun.  As I looked on her I could not but mind
+me of Cinderella; and when I looked in her face, and then at her feet to
+see whether they were as neat and as little as in the tale, I saw that
+she had small ankles and sweet little shoes; and as for her face, I
+deemed I had never seen one so lovely and at the same time so strange to
+me.  Yea, she seemed to have come from another world than this that I and
+the others lived in; for we were light or brown haired, with blue or grey
+eyes, and healthy red and white faces; while Cinderella had a low
+forehead and with big dark eyes strange, long, fine silky lashes; and
+heavy plaits of black hair hung down her back.
+
+Ursula Tetzel was accounted by the lads the comeliest maiden of us all;
+and I knew full well that the flower she wore in her bodice had been
+given to her by my brother Herdegen early that morning, because he had
+chosen her for his "Lady," and said she was the fairest; but as I looked
+at her beside this stranger I deemed that she was of poorer stuff.
+
+Moreover Cinderella was a stranger to me, and all the others I knew well,
+but I had to take patience for a whole hour ere I could ask who this fair
+Cinderella was, for Sister Margaret kept her eye on us, and so long as I
+was taught by her, no one at any time made so bold as to speak during
+lessons or venture on any pastime.
+
+At last, in a few minutes for rest, I asked Ursula Tetzel, who had come
+to the convent school for a year past.  She put out her red nether-lip
+with a look of scorn and said the new scholar had been thrust among us
+but did not belong to the like of us.  Sister Margaret, though of a noble
+house herself, had forgot what was due to us and our families, and had
+taken in this grey bat out of pity.  Her father was a simple clerk in the
+Chancery office and was accountant to the convent for some small wage.
+His name was Veit Spiesz, and she had heard her father say that the
+scribe was the son of a simple lute-player and could hardly earn enough
+to live.  He had formerly served in a merchant's house at Venice.  There
+he had wed an Italian woman, and all his children, which were many, had,
+like her, hair and eyes as black as the devil.  For the sake of a "God
+repay thee!" this maid, named Ann, had been brought to mix with us
+daughters of noble houses.  "But we will harry her out," said Ursula,
+"you will see!"
+
+This shocked me sorely, and I said that would be cruel and I would have
+no part in such a matter; but Ursula laughed and said I was yet but a
+green thing, and turned away to the window-shelf where all the new-comers
+had laid out their sweetmeats at the behest of the eldest or first of the
+class; for, by old custom, all the sweetmeats brought by the novices on
+the first day were in common.
+
+All the party crowded round the heap of sweetmeats, which waxed greater
+and greater, and I was standing among the others when I saw that the
+scribe's daughter Ann, Cinderella, was standing lonely and hanging her
+head by the tiled stove at the end of the room.  I forthwith hastened to
+her, pressed the little packet which Mistress Grosz had given me into her
+hand--for I had it still hidden in my poke--and, whispered to her: "I had
+two of them, little Ann; make haste and pour them on the heap."
+
+She gave me a questioning look with her great eyes, and when she saw that
+I meant it truly she nodded, and there was something in her tearful look
+which I never can forget; and I mind, too, that when I passed the little
+packet into her hand it seemed that I, and not she, had received the
+favor.
+
+She gave the sweetmeats she had taken from me to the eldest, and
+spoke not a word, and did not seem to mark that they all mocked at the
+smallness of the packet.  But soon enough their scorn was turned to glee
+and praises; for out of Cinderella's parcel such fine sweetmeats fell on
+to the heap as never another one had brought with her, and among them was
+a little phial of attar of roses from the Levant.
+
+At first Ann had cast an anxious look at me, then she seemed as though
+she cared not; but when the oil of roses came to light she took it firmly
+in her hand to give to me.  But Ursula cried out: "Nay.  Whatsoever the
+new-comers bring is for all to share in common!"  Notwithstanding, Ann
+laid her hand on mine, which already held the phial, and said boldly: "I
+give this to Margery, and I renounce all the rest."
+
+And there was not one to say her nay, or hinder her; and when she refused
+to eat with them, each one strove to press upon her so much as fell to
+her share.
+
+When Sister Margaret came back into the room she looked to find us in
+good order and holding our peace; and while we awaited her Ann whispered
+to me, as though to put herself right in my eyes: "I had a packet of
+sweetmeats; but there are four little ones at home."
+
+Cousin Maud was waiting at the convent gate to take me home.  As I was
+setting forth at good speed, hand in hand with my new friend, she looked
+at the little maid's plain garb from top to toe, and not kindly.  And she
+made me leave hold, but yet as though it were by chance, for she came
+between us to put my hood straight.  Then she busied herself with my
+neckkerchief and whispered in my ear: "Who is that?"
+
+So I replied: "Little Ann;" and when she went on to ask who her father
+might be, I told her she was a scrivener's daughter, and was about to
+speak of her with hearty good will, when my cousin stopped me by saying
+to Ann: "God save you child; Margery and I must hurry."  And she strove
+to get me on and away; but I struggled to be free from her, and cried out
+with the wilful pride which at that time I was wont to show when I
+thought folks would hinder that which seemed good and right in my eyes:
+"Little Ann shall come with us."
+
+But the little maid had her pride likewise, and said firmly: "Be dutiful,
+Margery; I can go alone."  At this Cousin Maud looked at her more
+closely, and thereupon her eyes had the soft light of good will which I
+loved so well, and she herself began to question Ann about her kinsfolk.
+The little maid answered readily but modestly, and when my Cousin
+understood that her father was a certain writer in the Chancery of whom
+she had heard a good report, she was softer and more gentle, so that when
+I took hold again of Ann's little hand she let it pass, and presently, at
+parting, kissed her on the brow and bid her carry a greeting to her
+worthy father.
+
+Now, when I was alone with Cousin Maud and gave her to understand that
+I loved the scribe's little daughter and wished for no dearer friend,
+she answered gravely; "Little maids can hold no conversation with any
+but those whose mothers meet in each other's houses.  Take patience till
+I can speak to Sister Margaret."  So when my Cousin went out in the
+afternoon I tarried in the most anxious expectation; but she came home
+with famous good tidings, and thenceforward Ann was a friend to whom I
+clung almost as closely as to my brothers.  And which of us was the chief
+gainer it would be hard to say, for whereas I found in her a trusted
+companion to whom I might impart every thing which was scarce worthy of
+my brothers' or my Cousin's ears, and foremost of all things my childish
+good-will for my Cousin Gotz and love of the Forest, to her the place in
+my heart and in our house were as a haven of peace when she craved rest
+after the heavy duties which, for all she was so young, she had already
+taken upon herself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+True it is that the class I learnt in at the convent was under the
+strictest rule, and that my teacher was a Carthusian nun; and yet I take
+pleasure in calling to mind the years when my spirit enjoyed the benefit
+of schooling with friendly companions and by the side of my best friend.
+Nay, even in the midst of the silent dwelling of the speechless Sisters,
+right merry laughter might be heard during the hours of rest, and in
+spite of the thick walls of the class-room it reached the nuns' ears.
+Albeit at first I was stricken with awe, and shy in their presence,
+I soon became familiar with their strange manner of life, and there was
+many an one whom I learnt truly to love: with some, too, we could talk
+and jest right merrily, for they, to be sure, had good ears, and we,
+were not slow in learning the language of their eyes and fingers.
+
+As concerning the rule of silence no one, to my knowledge, ever broke it
+in the presence of us little ones, save only Sister Renata, and she was
+dismissed from the convent; yet, as I waxed older, I could see that the
+nuns were as fain to hear any tidings of the outer life that might find a
+way into the cloister as though there was nothing they held more dear
+than the world which they had withdrawn from by their own free choice.
+
+For my part, I have ever been, and remain to the end, one of those least
+fitted for the Carthusian habit, notwithstanding that Sister Margaret
+would paint the beatitudes and the purifying power of her Order in fair
+and tempting colors.  In the hours given up to sacred teaching, when she
+would shed out upon us the overflowing wealth and abundant grace of her
+loving spirit--insomuch that she won not less than four souls of our
+small number to the sisterhood--she was wont and glad to speak of this
+matter, and would say that there was a heavenly spirit living and moving
+in every human breast.  That it told us, with the clear and holy voice
+of angels, what was divine and true, but that the noise of the world and
+our own vain imaginings sounded louder and would not suffer us to hear.
+But that they who took upon them the Carthusian rule and hearkened to
+it speechless, in a silent home, lending no ear to distant outer voices,
+but only to those within, would ere long learn to mark the heavenly voice
+with the inward ear and know its warning.  That voice would declare to
+them the glory and the will of the Most High God, and reveal the things
+that are hidden in such wise as that even here below he should take part
+in the joys of paradise.
+
+But, for all that I never was a Carthusian nun, and that my tongue was
+ever apt to run too freely, I conceive that I have found the Heavenly
+Spirit in the depths of my own soul and heard its voice; but in truth
+this has befallen me most clearly, and with most joy, when my heart has
+been most filled with that worldly love which the Carthusian Sisters shut
+out with a hundred doors.  And again, when I have been moved by that love
+towards my neighbor which is called Charity, and wearied myself out for
+him, sparing nothing that was my own, I have felt those divine emotions
+plainly enough in my breast.
+
+The Sister bid us to question her at all times without fear, and I was
+ever the foremost of us all to plague her with communings.  Of a
+certainty she could not at all times satisfy my soul, which thirsted for
+knowledge, though she never failed to calm it; for I stood firm in the
+faith, and all she could tell me of God's revelation to man I accepted
+gladly, without doubt or cavil.  She had taught us that faith and
+knowledge are things apart, and I felt that there could be no more peace
+for my soul if I suffered knowledge to meddle with faith.
+
+Led by her, I saw the Saviour as love incarnate; and that the love which
+He brought into the world was still and ever a living thing working after
+His will, I strove to confess with my thinking mind.  But I beheld even
+the Archbishops and Bishops go forth to battle, and shed the blood of
+their fellow men with vengeful rage; I saw Pope excommunicate Pope--for
+the great Schism only came to an end while I was yet at school; peaceful
+cities in their sore need bound themselves by treaties, under our eyes,
+for defence against Christian knights and lords.  The robber bands of the
+great nobles plundered merchants on the Emperor's highway, though they
+were of the same creed, while the citizens strove to seize the
+strongholds of the knights.  We heard of many more letters of defiance
+than of peacemaking and friendship.  Even the burgesses of our good
+Christian town--could not the love taught by the Redeemer prevail even
+among them?  And as with the great so with the simple; for was it love
+alone that reigned among us maidens in a Christian school?  Nay, verily;
+for never shall  I forget how that Ursula Tetzel, and in fellowship with
+her a good half of the others, pursued my sweet, sage Ann, the most
+diligent and best of us all, to drive her out of our midst; but in vain,
+thanks to Sister Margaret's upright justice.  Nay, the shrewish plotters
+were fain at last to see the scrivener's daughter uplifted to be our
+head, and this compelled them to bend their pride before her.
+
+All this and much more I would say to the good Sister; nay, and I made so
+bold as to ask her whether Christ's behest that we should love our enemy
+were not too high for attainment by the spirit of man.  This made her
+grave and thoughtful; yet she found no lack of comforting words, and said
+that the Lord had only showed the way and the end.  That men had turned
+sadly from both; but that many a stream wandered through divers windings
+from the path to its goal, the sea, before it reached it; and that
+mankind was wondrous like the stream, for, albeit they even now rend each
+other in bloody fights, the day will come when foe shall offer to foe the
+palm of peace, and when there shall be but one fold on earth and one
+Shepherd.
+
+But my anxious questioning, albeit I was but a child, had without doubt
+troubled her pure and truthful spirit.  It was in Passion week, of the
+fifth year of my school-life--and ever through those years she had become
+more bent and her voice had sunk lower, so that many a time we found it
+hard to hear her--that it fell that she could no longer quit her cell;
+and she sent me a bidding to go to her bedside, and with me only two of
+us all: to wit my Ann, and Elsa Ebner, a right good child and a diligent
+bee in her work.
+
+And it befell that as Sister Margaret on her deathbed bid us farewell for
+ever, with many a God speed and much good council for the rest likewise,
+her heart waxed soft and she went on to speak of the love each Christian
+soul oweth to his neighbor and eke to his enemy.  She fixed her eye in
+especial on me, and confessed with her pale lips that she herself had
+ofttimes found it hard to love evil-minded adversaries and those whose
+ways had been contrary to hers, as the law of the Saviour bid her.
+To those young ones among us who had made their minds up to take the veil
+she had, ere this, more especially shown what was needful; for their way
+lay plain before them, to walk as followers of Christ how bitter soever
+it might be to their human nature; but we were bound to live in the
+world, and she could but counsel us to flee from hate as the soul's worst
+foe and the most cunning of all the devils.  But an if it should befall
+that our heart could not be subdued after a brave struggle to love such
+or such an one, then ought we to strive at least to respect all that was
+good and praiseworthy in him, inasmuch as we should ever find something
+worthy of honor even in the most froward and least pleasing to ourselves.
+And these words I have ever kept in mind, and many times have they given
+me pause, when the hot blood of the Schoppers has bid me stoop and pick
+up a stone to fling at my neighbor.
+
+No longer than three days after she had thus bidden us to her side,
+Sister Margaret entered into her rest; she had been our strait but gentle
+teacher, and her learning was as far above that of most women of her time
+as the heavens are high; and as her mortal body lay, no longer bent, but
+at full length in the coffin, the saintly lady, who before she took the
+vows had been a Countess of Lupfen, belonged, meseemed, to a race taller
+than ours by a head.  A calm, queenlike dignity was on her noble thin
+face; and, this corpse being the first, as it fell, that I had ever
+looked on, it so worked on my mind that death, of which I had heretofore
+been in terror, took the image in my young soul of a great Master to whom
+we must indeed bow, but who is not our foe.
+
+I never could earn such praise as Ann, who was by good right at our head;
+notwithstanding I ever stood high.  And the vouchers I carried home were
+enough to content Cousin Maud, for her great wish that her foster-
+children should out-do others was amply fulfilled by Herdegen, the
+eldest.  He was indeed filled with sleeping learning, as it were, and I
+often conceived that he needed only fitting instruction and a fair start
+to wake it up.  For even he did not attain his learning without pains,
+and they who deem that it flew into his mouth agape are sorely mistaken.
+Many a time have I sat by his side while he pored over his books, and I
+could see how he set to work in right earnest when once he had cast away
+sports and pastime.  Thus with three mighty blows he would smite the nail
+home, which a weaker hand could not do with twenty.  For whole weeks he
+might be idle and about divers matters which had no concern with
+schooling; and then, of a sudden, set to work; and it would so wholly
+possess his soul that he would not have seen a stone drop close at his
+feet.
+
+My second brother, Kunz, was not at all on this wise.  Not that he was
+soft-witted; far from it.  His head was as clear as ever another's for
+all matters of daily life; but he found it hard to learn scholarship, and
+what Herdegen could master in one hour, it took him a whole livelong day
+to get.  Notwithstanding he was not one of the dunces, for he strove hard
+with all diligence, and rather would he have lost a night's sleep than
+have left what he deemed a duty only half done.  Thus there were sore
+half-hours for him in school-time; but he was not therefor to be pitied,
+for he had a right merry soul and was easily content, and loved many
+things.  Good temper and a high spirit looked out of his great blue eyes;
+aye, and when he had played some prank which was like to bring him into
+trouble he had a look in his eyes--a look that might have melted a stone
+to pity, much more good Cousin Maud.
+
+But this did not altogether profit him, for after that Herdegen had
+discovered one day how easily Kunz got off chastisement he would pray him
+to take upon himself many a misdeed which the elder had done; and Kunz,
+who was soft-hearted, was fain rather to suffer the penalty than to see
+it laid on his well-beloved brother.  Add to this that Kunz was a well-
+favored, slender youth;  but as compared with Herdegen's splendid looks
+and stalwart frame he looked no more than common.  For this cause he had
+no ill-wishers while our eldest's uncommon beauty in all respects, and
+his hasty temper, ever ready to boil over for good or evil, brought upon
+him much ill-will and misliking.
+
+When Cousin Maud beheld how little good Kunz got out of his learning, in
+spite of his zeal, she was minded to get him a private governor to teach
+him; and this she did by the advice of a learned doctor of Church-law,
+Albrecht Fleischmann, the vicar and provost of Saint Sebald's and member
+of the Imperial council, because we Schoppers were of the parish of Saint
+Sebald's, to which church Albrecht and Friedrich Schopper, God rest their
+souls, had attached a rich prebendary endowment.
+
+His Reverence the prebendary Fleischmann, having attended the Council at
+Costnitz, whither he was sent by the town elders with divers errands to
+the Emperor Sigismund, who was engaged in a disputation with John Huss
+the Bohemian schismatic, brought to my cousin's knowledge a governor
+whose name was Peter Pihringer, a native of Nuremberg.  He it was who
+brought the Greek tongue, which was not yet taught in the Latin schools
+of our city, not in our house alone, but likewise into others; he was not
+indeed at all like the high-souled men and heroes of whom his Plutarch
+wrote; nay, he was a right pitiable little man, who had learnt nothing of
+life, though all the more out of books.  He had journeyed long in Italy,
+from one great humanistic doctor to another, and while he had sat at
+their feet, feeding his soul with learning, his money had melted away in
+his hands--all that he had inherited from his father, a worthy tavern-
+keeper and master baker.  Much of his substance he had lent to false
+friends never to see it more, and it would scarce be believed how many
+times knavish rogues had beguiled this learned man of his goods.  At
+length he came home to Nuremberg, a needy traveller, entering the city by
+the same gate as that by which Huss had that same day departed, having
+tarried in Nuremberg on his way to Costnitz and won over divers of our
+learned scholars to his doctrine.  Now, after Magister Peter had written
+a very learned homily against the said Hans Huss, full of much Greek--
+of which, indeed, it was reported that it had brought a smile to the
+dauntless Bohemian's lips in the midst of his sorrow--he found a patron
+in Doctor Fleischmann, who was well pleased with this tractate, and he
+thenceforth made a living by teaching divers matters.  But he sped but
+ill, dwelling alone, inasmuch as he would forget to eat and drink and
+mislay or lose his hardly won wage.  Once the town watch had to see him
+home because, instead of a book, he was carrying a ham which a gossip had
+given him; and another day he was seen speeding down the streets with his
+nightcap on, to the great mirth of the lads and lasses.
+
+Notwithstanding he showed himself no whit unworthy of the high praise
+wherewith his Reverence the Prebendary had commended him, inasmuch as he
+was not only a right learned, but likewise a faithful and longsuffering
+teacher.  But his wisdom profited Herdegen and Ann and me rather than
+Kunz, though it was for his sake that he had come to us; and as, touching
+this strange man's person, my cousin told me later that when she saw him
+for the first time she took such a horror of his wretched looks that she
+was ready to bid him depart and desire the Reverend doctor to send us
+another governor.  But out of pity she would nevertheless give him a
+trial, and considering that I should ere long be fully grown, and that a
+young maid's heart is a strange thing, she deemed that a younger teacher
+might lead it into peril.
+
+At the time when Master Pihringer came to dwell with us, Herdegen was
+already high enough to pass into the upper school, for he was first in
+his 'ordo'; but our guardian, the old knight Hans Im Hoff, of whom I
+shall have much to tell, held that he was yet too young for the risks of
+a free scholar's life in a high school away from home, and he kept him
+two years more in Nuremberg at the school of the Brethren of the Holy
+Ghost, albeit the teaching there was not of the best.  At any rate Master
+Pihringer avowed that in all matters of learning we were out of all
+measure behind the Italians; and how rough and barbarous was the Latin
+spoken by the reverend Fathers and taught by them in the schools, I
+myself had later the means of judging.
+
+Their way of imparting that tongue was in truth a strange thing; for to
+fix the quantity of the syllables in the learners' mind, they were made
+to sing verses in chorus, while one of them, on whose head Father
+Hieronymus would set a paper cap to mark his office, beat the measure
+with a wooden sword; but what pranks of mischief the unruly rout would be
+playing all the time Kunz could describe better than I can.
+
+The great and famous works of the Roman chroniclers and poets, which our
+Master had come to know well in Italy--having besides fine copies of
+them--were never heard of in the Fathers' school, by reason, that those
+writers had all been mere blind heathen; but, verily, the common school
+catechisms which were given to the lads for their instruction, contained
+such foolish and ill-conceived matters, that any sage heathen would have
+been ashamed of them.  The highest exercise consisted of disputations on
+all manner of subtle and captious questions, and the Latin verses which
+the scholars hammered out under the rule of Father Jodocus were so vile
+as to rouse Magister Peter to great and righteous wrath.  Each morning,
+before the day's tasks began, the fine old hymn Salve Regina was chanted,
+and this was much better done in the Brothers' school than in ever
+another, for those Monks gave especial heed to the practice of good
+music.  My Herdegen profited much thereby, and he was the foremost of all
+the singing scholars.  He likewise gladly and of his own free will took
+part in the exercises of the Alumni, of whom twelve, called the Pueri,
+had to sing at holy mass, and at burials and festivals, as well as in the
+streets before the houses of the great city families and other worthy
+citizens.  The money they thus earned served to help maintain the poorer
+scholars, and to be sure, my brother was ready to forego his share; nay,
+and a great part of his own pocket-money went to those twelve, for among
+them were comrades he truly loved.
+
+There was something lordly in my elder brother, and his fellows were ever
+subject to his will.  Even at the shooting matches in sport he was ever
+chosen captain, and the singing pueri soon would do his every behest.
+Cousin Maud would give them free commons on many a Sunday and holy-day,
+and when they had well filled their hungry young crops at our table for
+the coming week of lean fare, they went out with us into the garden, and
+it presently rang with mirthful songs, Herdegen beating the measure,
+while we young maids joined in with a will.
+
+For the most part we three: Ann, Elsa Ebner, and I--were the only maids
+with the lads, but Ursula Tetzel was sometimes with us, for she was ever
+fain to be where Herdegen was.  And he had been diligent enough in
+waiting upon her ere ever I went to school.  There was a giving and
+taking of flowers and nosegays, for he had chosen her for his Lady, and
+she called him her knight; and if I saw him with a red knot on his cap I
+knew right well it was to wear her color; and I liked all this child's-
+play myself right well, inasmuch as I likewise had my chosen color:
+green, as pertaining to my cousin in the forest.
+
+But when I went to the convent-school all this was at an end, and I had
+no choice but to forego my childish love matters, not only for my tasks'
+sake, but forasmuch as I discerned that Gotz had a graver love matter on
+hand, and that such an one as moved his parents to great sorrow.
+
+The wench to whom he plighted his love was the daughter of a common
+craftsman, Pernhart the coppersmith, and when this came to my ears it
+angered me greatly; nay, and cost me bitter tears, as I told it to Ann.
+But ere long we were playing with our dollies again right happily.
+
+I took this matter to heart nevertheless, more than many another of my
+years might have done; and when we went again to the Forest Lodge and I
+missed Gotz from his place, and once, as it fell, heard my aunt lamenting
+to Cousin Maud bitterly indeed of the sorrows brought upon her by her
+only son--for he was fully bent on taking the working wench to wife in
+holy wedlock--in my heart I took my aunt's part.  And I deemed it a
+shameful and grievous thing that so fine a young gentleman could abase
+himself to bring heaviness on the best of parents for the sake of a
+lowborn maid.
+
+After this, one Sunday, it fell by chance that I went to mass with Ann to
+the church of St. Laurence, instead of St. Sebald's to which we belonged.
+Having said my prayer, looking about me I beheld Gotz, and saw how, as he
+leaned against a pillar, he held his gaze fixed on one certain spot.  My
+eyes followed his, and at once I saw whither they were drawn, for I saw a
+young maid of the citizen class in goodly, nay--in rich array, and she
+was herself of such rare and wonderful beauty that I myself could not
+take my eyes off her.  And I remembered that I had met the wench erewhile
+on the feast-day of St. John, and that uncle Christian Pfinzing, my
+worshipful godfather, had pointed her out to Cousin Maud, and had said
+that she was the fairest maid in Nuremberg whom they called, and rightly,
+Fair Gertrude.
+
+Now the longer I gazed at her the fairer I deemed her, and when Ann
+discovered to me, what I had at once divined, that this sweet maid was
+the daughter of Pernhart the coppersmith, my child's heart was glad, for
+if my cousin was without dispute the finest figure of a man in the whole
+assembly Fair Gertrude was the sweetest maid, I thought, in the whole
+wide world.
+
+If it had been possible that she could be of yet greater beauty it would
+but have added to my joy.  And henceforth I would go as often as I might
+to St. Laurence's, and past the coppersmith's house to behold Fair
+Gertrude; and my heart beat high with gladness when she one day saw me
+pass and graciously bowed to my silent greeting, and looked in my face
+with friendly inquiry.
+
+After this when Gotz came to our house I welcomed him gladly as
+heretofore; and one day, when I made bold to whisper in his ear that I
+had seen his fair Gertrude, and for certain no saint in heaven could have
+a sweeter face than hers, he thanked me with a bright look and it was
+from the bottom of his soul that he said: "If you could but know her
+faithful heart of gold!"
+
+For all this Gotz was dearer to me than of old, and it uplifted me in my
+own conceit that he should put such trust in a foolish young thing as I
+was.  But in later days it made me sad to see his frank and noble face
+grow ever more sorrowful, nay, and full of gloom; and I knew full well
+what pained him, for a child can often see much more than its elders
+deem.  Matters had come to a sharp quarrel betwixt the son and the
+parents, and I knew my cousin well, and his iron will which was a by-word
+with us.  And my aunt in the Forest was of the same temper; albeit her
+body was sickly, she was one of those women who will not bear to be
+withstood, and my heart hung heavy with fear when I conceived of the
+outcome of this matter.
+
+Hence it was a boon indeed to me that I had my Ann for a friend, and
+could pour out to her all that filled my young soul with fears.  How our
+cheeks would burn when many a time we spoke of the love which was the
+bond between Gotz and his fair Gertrude.  To us, indeed, it was as yet
+a mystery, but that it was sweet and full of joy we deemed a certainty.
+We would have been fain to cry out to the Emperor and the world to take
+arms against the ruthless parents who were minded to tread so holy a
+blossom in the dust; but since this was not in our power we had dreams of
+essaying to touch the heart of my forest aunt, for she had but that one
+son and no daughter to make her glad, and I had ever been her favorite.
+
+Thus passed many weeks, and one morning, when I came forth from school,
+I found Gotz with Cousin Maud who had been speaking with him, and her
+eyes were wet with tears; and I heard him cry out:
+
+"It is in my mother's power to drive me to misery and ruin; but no power
+in heaven or on earth can drive me to break the oath and forswear the
+faith I have sworn!"
+
+And his cheeks were red, and I had never seen him look so great and tall.
+
+Then, when he saw me, he held out both hands to me in his frank, loving
+way, and I took them with all my heart.  At this he looked into my eyes
+which were full of tears, and he drew me hastily to him and kissed me on
+my brow for the first time in all his life, with strange passion; and
+without another word he ran out of the house-door into the street.  My
+cousin gazed after him, shaking her head sadly and wiping her eyes; but
+when I asked her what was wrong with my cousin she would give me no
+tidings of the matter.
+
+The next day we should have gone out to the forest, but we remained at
+home; Aunt Jacoba would see no one.  Her son had turned his back on his
+parents' dwelling, and had gone out as a stranger among strangers.  And
+this was the first sore grief sent by Heaven on my young heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Many of the fairest memories of my childhood are linked with the house
+where Ann's parents dwelt.  It was indeed but a simple home and not to be
+named with ours--the Schopperhof--for greatness or for riches; but it was
+a snug nest, and in divers ways so unlike ever another that it was full
+of pleasures for a child.
+
+Master Spiesz, Ann's father, had been bidden from Venice, where he had
+been in the service of the Mendel's merchant house, to become head clerk
+in Nuremberg, first in the Chamber of Taxes, and then in the Chancery,
+a respectable post of much trust.  His father was, as Ursula Tetzel had
+said in the school, a luteplayer; but he had long been held the head and
+chief of teachers of the noble art of music, and was so greatly respected
+by the clergy and laity that he was made master and leader of the church
+choir, and even in the houses of the city nobles his teaching of the lute
+and of singing was deemed the best.  He was a right well-disposed and
+cheerful old man, of a rare good heart and temper, and of wondrous good
+devices.  When the worshipful town council bid his son Veit Spiesz come
+back to Nuremberg, the old man must need fit up a proper house for him,
+since he himself was content with a small chamber, and the scribe was by
+this time married to the fair Giovanna, the daughter of one of the
+Sensali or brokers of the German Fondaco, and must have a home and hearth
+of his own.
+
+     [Sensali--Agents who conducted all matters of business between the
+     German and Venetian merchants.  Not even the smallest affair was
+     settled without their intervention, on account of the duties
+     demanded by the Republic.  The Fondaco was the name of the great
+     exchange established by the Republic itself for the German trade.]
+
+The musician, who had as a student dwelt in Venice, hit on the fancy that
+he would give his daughter-in-law a home in Nuremberg like her father's
+house, which stood on one of the canals in Venice; so he found a house
+with windows looking to the river, and which he therefore deemed fit to
+ease her homesickness.  And verily the Venetian lady was pleased with the
+placing of her house, and yet more with the old man's loving care for
+her; although the house was over tall, and so narrow that there were but
+two windows on each floor.  Thus there was no manner of going to and fro
+in the Spiesz's house, but only up and down.  Notwithstanding, the
+Venetian lady loved it, and I have heard her say that there was no spot
+so sweet in all Nuremberg as the window seat on the second story of her
+house.  There stood her spinning-wheel and sewing-box; and a bright
+Venice mirror, which, in jest, she would call "Dame  Inquisitive," showed
+her all that passed on the river and the Fleisch-brucke, for her house
+was not far from those which stood facing the Franciscan Friars.  There
+she ruled in peace and good order, in love and all sweetness, and her
+children throve even as the flowers did under her hand: roses, auriculas,
+pinks and pansies; and whosoever went past the house in a boat could hear
+mirth within and the voice of song.  For the Spiesz children had a fine
+ear for music, both from their grandsire and their mother, and sweet,
+clear, bell-like voices.  My Ann was the queen of them all, and her
+nightingale's throat drew even Herdegen to her with great power.
+
+Only one of the scribe's children, little Mario, was shut out from the
+world of sound, for he was a deaf-mute born; and when Ann tarried under
+our roof, rarely indeed and for but a short while, her stay was brief for
+his sake; for she tended him with such care and love as though she had
+been his own mother.  Albeit she thereby was put to much pains, these
+were as nothing to the heartfelt joys which the love and good speed of
+this child brought her; for notwithstanding he was thus born to sorrow,
+by his sister's faithful care he grew a happy and thankful creature.
+Ofttimes my Cousin Maud was witness to her teaching of her little
+brother, and all Ann did for the child seemed to her so pious and so
+wonderful, that it broke down the last bar that stood in the way of our
+close fellowship.  And Ann's well-favored mother likewise won my cousin's
+good graces, albeit she was swift to mark that the Italian lady could
+fall in but ill with German ways, and in especial with those of
+Nuremberg, and was ever ready to let Ann bear the burthen of the
+household.
+
+All our closest friends, and foremost of these my worshipful godfather
+Uncle Christian Pfinzing, ere long truly loved my little Ann; and of all
+our fellows I knew of only one who was ill-disposed towards her, and that
+was Ursula Tetzel, who marked, with ill-cloaked wrath, that my brother
+Herdegen cared less and less for her, and did Ann many a little courtesy
+wherewith he had formerly favored her.  She could not dissemble her
+anger, and when my eldest brother waited on Ann on her name day with the
+'pueri' to give her a 'serenata' on the water, whereas, a year agone, he
+had done Ursula the like honor, she fell upon my friend in our garden
+with such fierce and cruel words that my cousin had to come betwixt them,
+and then to temper my great wrath by saying that Ursula was a motherless
+child, whose hasty ways had never been bridled by a loving hand.
+
+As I mind me now of those days I do so with heartfelt thankfulness and
+joy.  To be sure it but ill-pleased our grand-uncle and guardian, the
+knight Im Hoff, that Cousin Maud should suffer me, the daughter of a
+noble house, to mix with the low born race of a simple scrivener; but
+in sooth Ann was more like by far to get harm in our house, among my
+brethren and their fellows, than I in the peaceful home by the river,
+where none but seemly speech was ever heard and sweet singing, nor ever
+seen but labor and good order and content.
+
+Right glad was I to tarry there; but yet how good it was when Ann got
+leave to come to us for the whole of Sunday from noon till eventide; when
+we would first sit and chatter and play alone together, and talk over all
+we had done in school; thereafter we had my brothers with us, and would
+go out to take the air under the care of my cousin or of Magister Peter,
+or abide at home to sing or have merry pastime.
+
+After the Ave Maria, the old organist, Adam Heyden, Ann's grand uncle,
+would come to seek her, and many sweet memories dwell in my mind of that
+worthy and gifted man, which I might set down were it not that I am Ann's
+debtor for so many things that made my childhood happy.  It was she, for
+a certainty, who first taught me truly to play; for whereas my dolls, and
+men-at-arms and shop games, albeit they were small, were in all points
+like the true great ones, she had but a staff of wood wrapped round with
+a kerchief which she rocked in her arms for a babe; and when she played a
+shop game with the little ones, she marked stones and leaves to be their
+wares and their money, and so found far greater pastime than we when we
+played with figs and almonds and cloves out of little wooden chests and
+linen-cloth sacks, and weighed them with brass weights on little scales
+with a tongue and string.  It was she who brought imagination to bear on
+my pastimes, and many a time has she borne my fancy far enough from the
+Pegnitz, over seas and rivers to groves of palm and golden fairy lands.
+
+Our fellowship with my brethren was grateful to her as it was to me; but
+meseems it was a different thing in those early years from what it was in
+later days.  While I write a certain summer day from that long past time
+comes back to my mind strangely clear.  We had played long enough in our
+chamber, and we found it too hot in the loft under the roof, where we had
+climbed on to the beams, which were great, so we went down into the
+garden.  Herdegen had quitted us in haste after noon, and we found none
+but Kunz, who was shaping arrows for his cross-bow.  But he ere long
+threw away his knife and came to be with us, and as he was well-disposed
+to Ann as being my friend, he did his best to make himself pleasing, or
+at least noteworthy in her sight.  He stood on his head and then climbed
+to the top of the tallest fruit-tree and flung down pears, but they smote
+her head so that she cried out; then he turned a wheel on his hands and
+feet, and a little more and his shoe would hit her in the face; and when
+he marked that he was but troubling us, he went away sorrowful, but only
+to hide behind a bush, and as we went past, to rush out on a sudden and
+put us in fear by wild shouting.
+
+My eldest brother well-nigh affrighted us more when he presently joined
+us, for his hair was all unkempt and his looks wild.  He was now of an
+age when men-children deem maids to be weak and unfit for true sport, but
+nevertheless strive their utmost to be marked and chosen by them.  Hence
+Ursula's good graces, which she had shown right openly, had for a long
+while greatly pleased him, but by this time he was weary of her and began
+to conceive that good little Ann, with her nightingale's voice, was more
+to his liking.
+
+After hastily greeting us, he forthwith made us privy to an evil matter.
+One of his fellowship, Laurence Abenberger, the son of an apothecary, who
+was diligent in school, and of a wondrous pious spirit, gave up all his
+spare time to all manner of magic arts, and albeit he was but seventeen
+years of age, he had already cast nativities for many folks and for us
+maids, and had told us of divers ill-omens for the future.  This
+Abenberger, a little fellow of no note, had found in some ancient papers
+a recipe for discovering treasure, and had told the secret to Herdegen
+and some other few.  To begin, they went at his bidding to the graveyard
+with him, and there, at the full moon, they poured hot lead into the left
+eye-hole of a skull and made it into arrow-heads.  Yesternight they had
+journeyed forth as far as Sinterspuhel, and there, at midnight, had stood
+at the cross-roads and shot with these same arrow-heads to the four
+quarters, to the end that they might dig for treasure wheresoever the
+shafts might fall.  But they found no treasure, but a newly-buried body,
+and on this had taken to their heels in all haste.  Herdegen only had
+tarried behind with Abenberger, and when he saw that there were deep
+wounds on the head of the dead man his intent was to carry the tidings to
+the justices in council; nevertheless he would delay a while, because
+Abenberger had besought him to keep silence and not to bring him to an
+evil end.  But as he had gone past the school of arms he had learnt that
+an apprentice was missing, and that it was feared lest he had been
+waylaid by pillagers, or had fallen into evil hands; so he now deemed it
+his plain duty to keep no longer silence concerning the finding of the
+body, and desired to be advised by me and Ann.  While I, for my part,
+shortly and clearly declared that information must at once be laid
+before his worship the Mayor, a strange trembling fell on Ann, and
+notwithstanding she could not say me nay, she was in such fear that grave
+mischief might overtake Herdegen by reason of his thoughtless deed, that
+tears ran in streams down her cheeks, and it cost me great pains or ever
+I could comfort her, so brave and reasonable as she commonly was.  But
+Herdegen was greatly pleased by her too great terrors; and albeit he
+laughed at her, he called her his faithful, fearful little hare, and
+stuck the pink he wore in his jerkin into her hair.  At this she was soon
+herself again; she counselled him forthwith to do that it was his duty to
+do; and when thereafter the authorities had made inquisition, it came to
+light that our lads had in truth come upon the body of the slain
+apprentice.  And though Herdegen did his best to keep silence as touching
+Abenberger's evildoings, they nevertheless came out through other ways,
+and the poor wight was dismissed from the school.
+
+By the end of two years after this, matters had changed in our household.
+
+The twelve 'pueri' had been our guests at dinner, and were in the garden
+singing merry rounds well known to us, and I joined in, with Ann and
+Ursula Tetzel.  Now, while Herdegen beat the time, his ear was intent on
+Ann's singing, as though there were revelation on her lips; and his well-
+beloved companion, Heinrich Trardorf, who erewhile had, with due modesty,
+preferred me, Margery, seemed likewise well affected to her singing; and
+when we ceased he fell into eager talk with her, for he had bewailed to
+her that, albeit he loved me well, as being the son of simple folk he
+might never lift up his eyes so high.
+
+Herdegen's eyes rested on the twain with some little wrath; then he
+hastily got up!  He snatched the last of Cousin Maud's precious roses
+from her favorite bush and gave them to Ursula, and then waited on her as
+though she were the only maid there present.  But ere long her father
+came to fetch her, and so soon as she had departed, beaming, with her
+roses, Herdegen hastily came to me and, without deeming Ann worthy to be
+looked at even, bid me good even.  I held his hand and called to her to
+come to me, to help me hinder him from departing, inasmuch as one of the
+pueri was about to play the lute for the rest to dance.  She came forward
+as an honest maid should, looked up at him with her great eyes, and
+besought him full sweetly to tarry with us.
+
+He pointed with his hand to Trardorf and answered roughly: "I care not to
+go halves!"  And he turned to go to the gate.
+
+Ann took him by the hand, and without a word of his ways with Ursula,
+not in chiding but as in deep grief, she said: "If you depart, you do me
+a hurt.  I have no pleasure but when you are by, and what do I care for
+Heinrich?"
+
+This was all he needed; his eye again met hers with bright looks, and
+from that hour of our childhood she knew no will but his.
+
+From that hour likewise Ann held off from all other lads, and when he was
+by it seemed as though she had no eyes nor ears save for him and me
+alone.  To Kunz she paid little heed; yet he never failed to wait on her
+and watch to do her service, as though she were the daughter of some
+great lord, and he no more than her page.
+
+Ann freely owned to me that she held Herdegen to be the noblest youth
+on earth, nor could I marvel, when I was myself of the same mind.  What
+should I know, when I was still but fourteen and fifteen years old, of
+love and its dangers?  I had felt such love for Gotz as Ann for my elder
+brother, and as I had then been glad that my dear Cousin had won the love
+of so fair a maid as Gertrude, I likewise believed that Ann would some
+day be glad if Herdegen should plight his troth to a fair damsel of high
+degree.  Hence I did all that in me lay to bring them together whenever
+it might be, and in truth this befell often enough without my aid; for
+not music alone was a bond between them, nor yet that Herdegen and I
+taught her to ride on a horse, on the sandy way behind our horse-stalls
+--the Greek lessons for which Magister Peter had come into the household
+were a plea on which they passed many an hour together.
+
+I was slow to learn that tongue; but Ann's head was not less apt than my
+brother's, and he was eager and diligent to keep her good speed at the
+like mark with his own, as she was so quick to apprehend.  Thus both were
+at last forward enough to put Greek into German, and then Magister Peter
+was bidden to lend them his aid.  Now, the change in the worthy man,
+after eating for four years at our table, was such that many an one would
+have said it was a miracle.  At his first coming to us he himself said he
+weened he was a doomed son of ill-luck, and he scarce dared look man or
+woman in the face; and what a good figure he made now, notwithstanding
+the divers pranks played on his simplicity by my brothers and their
+fellows, nay, and some whiles by me.
+
+Many an one before this has marked that the god Amor is the best
+schoolmaster; and when our Magister had learnt to stoop less, nay almost
+to hold himself straight, when as now, he wore his good new coat with
+wide hanging sleeves, tight-fitting hose, a well-stiffened, snow-white
+collar, and even a smart black feather in his beretta, when he not alone
+smoothed his hair but anointed it, all this, in its beginnings, was by
+reason of his great and true love for my Ann, while she was yet but a
+child.
+
+My cautious Cousin Maud had, it is true, done the blind god of Love good
+service; for many a time she would, with her own hand, set some matter
+straight which the Magister had put on all askew, and on divers occasions
+would give him a piece of fine cloth, and with it the cost of the
+tailor's work, in bright new coin wrapped in colored paper.  She brought
+him to order and to keep his hours, and when grave speech availed not she
+could laugh at him with friendly mockery, such as hurts no man, inasmuch
+as it is the outcome of a good heart.  Thus it was, that, by the time
+when Herdegen was to go to the high school at Erfurt, Magister Peter was
+not strangely unlike other learned men of his standing; and when it fell
+that he had to discourse of the great masters of learning in Italy, or of
+the glorious Greek writers, I have seen his eye light up like that of a
+youth.
+
+Our guardian kept watch over my brothers' speed in learning.  The old
+knight Im Hoff was a somewhat stern man and shy of his kind, but scarce
+another had such great wealth, or was so highly respected in our town.
+He was our grand-uncle, as old Adam Heyden was Ann's, and two men less
+alike it would be hard to find.
+
+When we were bid to pay our devoir to my guardian it was seldom done but
+with much complaining and churlishness; whereas it was ever a festival to
+be suffered to go with Ann to the organist's house.  He dwelt in a fine
+lodging high up in the tower above the city, and he could look down from
+his windows, as God Almighty looks down on the earth from the bright
+heavens, over Nuremberg, and the fortress on the hill, the wide ring of
+forest which guards it on the north and east and south, the meadows and
+villages stretching between the woods, and the walls and turrets of our
+good city, and the windings of the river Pegnitz.  He loved to boast that
+he was the first to bid the sun welcome and the last to bid it good-
+night; and perchance it was to the light, of which he had so goodly a
+share, that his spirit owed its ever gay good-cheer.  He was ever ready
+with a jest and some little gift for us children; and, albeit these were
+of little money's worth, they brought us much joy.  And indeed there was
+never another man in Nuremberg who had given away so many tokens and made
+so many glad hearts and faces thereby as Adam Heyden.  True, indeed,
+after a short but blessed wedded life he had been left a widower and
+childless, and had no care to save for his heirs; and yet Gottfried
+Spiesz, Ann's grandfather, was in the right when he said that he had more
+children than ever another in Nuremberg, inasmuch as that he was like a
+father to every lad and maid in the town.
+
+When he walked down the street all the little ones were as glad though
+they had met Christ the Lord or Saint Nicholas; and as they hung on to
+his long gown with the left hand, with the right they crammed their
+mouths with the apples or cakes whereof his pockets seemed never to be
+empty.
+
+But Master Adam had his weak side, and there were many to blame him for
+that he was over fond of good liquor.  Albeit he did his drinking after a
+manner of his own, in no unseemly wise.  To wit, on certain year-days he
+would tarry alone in his tower, and his lamp might be seen gleaming till
+midnight.  There he would sit alone, with his wine jar and cup, and he
+would drink the first and second and third in silence, to the good speed
+of Elsa, his late departed wife.  After that he began to sing in a low
+voice, and before each fresh cup as he raised it he cried aloud "Prosit,
+Adam!"  and when it was empty: "I Heartily thank you, Heyden!"
+
+Thus would he go on till he had drunk out divers jugs, and the tower
+seemed to be spinning round him.  Then to his bed, where he would dream
+of his Elsa and the good old days, the folks he had loved, his youthful
+courtships, and all the fine and wondrous things which his lonely
+drinking bout had brought to his inward eye.  Next morning he was
+faithfully at his duty.  Common evenings, which were of no mark to him,
+he spent with the Spiesz folks in the little house by the river, or else
+in the Gentlemen's tavern in the Frohnwage; for albeit none met there but
+such as belonged to the noble families of the town, and learned men, and
+artists of mark, Adam Heyden the organist was held as their equal and a
+right welcome guest.
+
+And now as touching our grand-uncle and guardian the Knight Sir Sebald
+Im Hoff.
+
+Many an one will understand how that my fear of him grew greater after
+that I one evening by mishap chanced to go into his bed chamber, and
+there saw a black coffin wherein he was wont to sleep each night, as it
+were in a bed.  It was easy to see in the man himself that some deep
+sorrow or heavy sin gnawed at his heart, and nevertheless he was one of
+the stateliest old gentlemen I have met in a long life.  His face seemed
+as though cast in metal, and was of wondrous fine mould, but deadly and
+unchangefully pale.  His snowy hair fell in long locks over his collar of
+sable fur, and his short beard, cut in a point, was likewise of a silver
+whiteness.  When he stood up he was much taller than common, and he
+walked with princelike dignity.  For many years he had ceased to go to
+other folks' houses, nevertheless many others sought him out.  In every
+family of rank, excepting in his own, the Im Hoff family, wherever there
+was a manchild or a maid growing up they were brought to him; but of them
+all there were but two who dare come nigh him without fear.  These were
+my brother Herdegen and Ursula Tetzel; and throughout my young days she
+was the one soul whom mine altogether shut out.
+
+Notwithstanding I must for justice sake confess that she grew up to be a
+well-favored damsel.  Besides this, she was the only offspring of a rich
+and noble house.  She went from school a year before Ann and I did, and
+after that her father, a haughty and eke a surly man, who had long since
+lost his wife, her mother, prided himself on giving her such attires as
+might have beseemed the daughter of a Count or a Prince-Elector.  And the
+brocades and fine furs and costly chains and clasps she wore graced her
+lofty, round shape exceeding well, and she lorded it so haughtily in them
+that the worshipful town-council were moved to put forth an order against
+over much splendor in women's weed.
+
+She was, verily and indeed, the last damsel I could have wished to see
+brought home as mistress of the "Schopperhof," and nevertheless I knew
+full well, before my brother went away to the high school, that our grand
+uncle was counting on giving her and him to each other in marriage.
+Master Tetzel likewise would point to them when they stood side by side,
+so high and goodly, as though they were a pair; and this old man, whose
+face was as grey and cold and hueless as all about his daughter was
+bright and gay, would demean himself with utter humbleness and homage to
+the lad who scarce showed the first down on his lip and chin, by reason
+that he looked upon him, who was his granduncle's heir, as his own son-
+in-law.
+
+It was, to be sure, known to many that rich old Im Hoff was minded to
+leave great endowments to the Holy Church, and meseemed that it was
+praiseworthy and wise that he should do all that in him lay to gain the
+prayers of the Blessed Virgin and the dear Saints; for the evil deed
+which had turned him from a dashing knight into a lonely penitent might
+well weigh in torment on his poor soul.  I will here shortly rehearse all
+I myself knew of that matter.
+
+In his young days my grand uncle had carried his head high indeed, and
+deemed so greatly of his scutcheon and his knightly forbears that be
+scorned all civic dignities as but a small matter.  Then, whereas in the
+middle of the past century all towns were forbid by imperial law to hold
+tournaments, he went to Court, and had been dubbed knight by the Emperor
+Charles, and won fame and honor by many a shrewd lance-thrust.  His more
+than common manly beauty gained him favor with the ladies, and since he
+preferred what was noble and knightly to all other graces he would wed no
+daughter of Nuremberg but the penniless child of Baron von Frauentrift.
+But my grand-uncle had made an evil choice; his wife was high-tempered
+and filled full of conceits.  When princes and great lords came into our
+city, they were ever ready to find lodging in the great and wealthy house
+of the Im Hoffs; but then she would suffer them to pay court to her, and
+grant them greater freedom than becomes the decent honor of a Nuremberg
+citizen's hearth.  Once, then, when my lord the duke of Bavaria lay at
+their house with a numerous fellowship, a fine young count, who had
+courted my grand uncle's wife while she was yet a maid, fanned his
+jealousy to a flame; and, one evening, at a late hour, while his wife was
+yet not come home from seeing some friends, as it fell he heard a noise
+and whispering of voices, beneath their lodging, in the courtyard wherein
+all these folks' chests and bales were bestowed.  He rushed forth, beside
+himself; and whereas he shouted out to the courtyard and got no reply, he
+thrust right and left at haphazard with his naked sword among the chests
+whence he had heard the voices, and a pitiful cry warned him that he had
+struck home.  Then there came the wailing of a woman; and when the
+squires and yeomen came forth with torches and lanterns, he could see
+that he had slain Ludwig Tetzel, Ursula's uncle, a young unwedded man.
+He had stolen into the courtyard to hold a tryst with the fair daughter
+of the master-weigher in the Im Hoffs' house of trade, and the loving
+pair, in their fear of the master, had not answered his call, but had
+crept behind the baggage.  Thus, by ill guidance, had my grand-uncle
+become a murderer, and the judges broke their staff over him; albeit,
+since he freely confessed the deed of death, and had done it with no evil
+intent, they were content to make him pay a fine in money.  But some said
+that they likewise commanded the hangman to nail up a gallows-cord behind
+his house door; others, rather, that he had taken upon himself the
+penance of ever wearing such a cord about his neck day and night.
+
+As touching the Tetzels themselves, they made no claim for blood; and for
+this he was so thankful to them, all his life through, that he gave them
+his word that he would name Ursula in his testament; whereas he ever
+hated the Im Hoffs to the end, after that they, on whom he had brought so
+much vexation by his wilful and haughty temper, took counsel after the
+judgment as to whether it behooved them not to strip him of their good
+old name and thrust him forth from their kinship.  Four only, as against
+three, spoke in his favor, and this his haughty spirit could so ill
+endure that never an Im Hoff dared cross his threshold, though one and
+another often strove to win back his favor.
+
+He had little comfort from his wife in his grief, for when he was found
+guilty of manslaughter she quitted him to return to the Emperor's court
+at Prague, and there she died after a wild hunt which she had followed in
+King Wenzel's train, while she was not yet past her youth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Three years were past since Herdegen had first gone to the High School,
+and we had never seen him but for a few weeks at the end of the first
+year, when he was on his way from Erfurt to Padua.  In the letters he
+wrote from thence there was ever a greeting for Mistress Anna, and often
+there would be a few words in Greek for her and me; yet, as he knew full
+well that she alone could crack such nuts, he bid me to the feast only as
+the fox bid the stork.  While he was with us he ever demeaned himself
+both to me and to her as a true and loving brother, when he was not at
+the school of arms proving to the amazement of the knights and nobles his
+wondrous skill in the handling of the sword, which he had got in the High
+School.  And during this same brief while be at divers times had speech
+of Ursula, but he showed plainly enough that he had lost all delight in
+her.
+
+He had found but half of what he sought at Erfurt, but deemed that he was
+ripe to go to Padua; for there, alone, he thought--and Magister Peter
+said likewise--could he find the true grist for his mill.  And when he
+told us of what he hoped to gain at that place we could but account his
+judgment good, and wish him good speed and that he might come home from
+that famous Italian school a luminary of learning.  When, at his
+departing, I saw that Ann was in no better heart than I was, but looked
+right doleful, I thought it was by reason of the sickness which for some
+while past had now and again fallen on her good father.  Kunz likewise
+had quitted school, and be could not complain that learning weighed too
+heavily on his light heart and merry spirit.  He was now serving his
+apprenticeship in our grand uncle's business, and whereas the traffic was
+mainly with Venice he was to learn the Italian tongue with all diligence.
+Our Magister, who was well-skilled in it, taught him therein, and was, as
+heretofore, well content to be with us.  Cousin Maud would never suffer
+him to depart, for it had grown to be a habit with her to care for him;
+albeit many an one can less easily suffer the presence of a man who needs
+help, than of one who is himself of use and service.
+
+Master Peter himself, under pretence of exercising himself in the Italian
+tongue, would often wait upon Dame Giovanna.  We on our part would
+remember the fable of the Sack and the Ass and laugh; while Ann slipped
+off to her garret chamber when the Magister was coming; and she could
+never fail to know of it, for no son of man ever smote so feebly as he
+with the knocker on the door plate.
+
+Thus the years in which we grew from children into maidens ran past in
+sheer peace and gladness.  Cousin Maud allowed us to have every pastime
+and delight; and if at times her face was less content, it was only by
+reason that I craved to wear a longer kirtle than she deemed fitting for
+my tender years, or that I proved myself over-rash in riding in the
+riding school or the open country.
+
+My close friendship with Ann brought me to mark and enjoy many other and
+better things; and in this I differed from the maidens of some noble
+families, who, to this day, sit in stalls of their own in church, apart
+from such as have no scutcheon of arms.  But indeed Ann was an honored
+guest in many a lordly house wherein our school and playmates dwelt.
+
+In summer days we would sometimes go forth to the farm belonging to us
+Schoppers outside the town, or else to Jorg Stromer our worthy cousin at
+the mill where paper is made; and at holy Whitsuntide we would ride forth
+to the farm at Laub, which his sister Dame Anna Borchtlin had by
+inheritance of her father.  Nevertheless, and for all that there was to
+see and learn at the paper-mill, and much as I relished the good fresh
+butter and the black home-bread and the lard cakes with which Dame
+Borchtlin made cheer for us, my heart best loved the green forest where
+dwelt our uncle Conrad Waldstromer, father to my cousin Gotz, who still
+was far abroad.
+
+Now, since I shall have much to tell of this well-beloved kinsman and of
+his kith and kin, I will here take leave to make mention that all the
+Stromers were descended from a certain knight, Conrad von Reichenbach,
+who erewhile had come from his castle of Kammerstein, hard by Schwabach,
+as far forth as Nuremberg.  There had he married a daughter of the
+Waldstromers, and the children and grandchildren, issue of this marriage,
+were all named Stromer or Waldstromer.  And the style Wald--or wood--
+Stromer is to be set down to the fact that this branch had, from a long
+past time, heretofore held the dignity of Rangers of the great forest
+which is the pride of Nuremberg to this very day.  But at the end of the
+last century the municipality had bought the offices and dignities which
+were theirs by inheritance, both from Waldstromer and eke from Koler the
+second ranger; albeit the worshipful council entrusted none others than a
+Waldstromer or a Koler with the care of its woods; and in my young days
+our Uncle Conrad Waldstromer was chief Forester, and a right bold hunter.
+
+Whensoever he crossed our threshold meseemed as though the fresh and
+wholesome breath of pine-woods was in the air; and when he gave me his
+hand it hurt mine, so firm and strong and loving withal was his grip, and
+that his heart was the same all men might see.  His thick, red-gold hair
+and beard, streaked with snowy white, his light, flax-blue eyes and his
+green forester's garb, with high tan boots and a cap of otter fur
+garnished with the feather of some bird he had slain--all this gave him a
+strange, gladsome, and gaudy look.  And as the stalwart man stepped forth
+with his hanger and hunting-knife at his girdle, followed by his hounds
+and badger-dogs, other children might have been affrighted, but to me,
+betimes, there was no dearer sight than this of the terrible-looking
+forester, who was besides Cousin Gotz's father.
+
+Well, on the second Sunday after Whitsunday, when the apple blossoms were
+all shed, my uncle came in to town to bid me and Cousin Maud to the
+forest lodge once more; for he ever dwelt there from one Springtide till
+the next, albeit he was under a bond to the Council to keep a house in
+the city.  I was nigh upon seventeen years old; Ann was past seventeen
+already, and I would have expressed my joy as freely as heretofore but
+that somewhat lay at my heart, and that was concerning my Ann.  She was
+not as she was wont to be; she was apt to suffer pains in her head, and
+the blood had fled from her fresh cheeks.  Nay, at her worst she was all
+pale, and the sight of her thus cut me to the heart, so I gladly agreed
+when Cousin Maud said that the little house by the river was doing her a
+mischief, and the grievous care of her deaf-mute brother and the other
+little ones, and that she lacked fresh air.  And indeed her own parents
+did not fail to mark it; but they lacked the means to obey the leech's
+orders and to give Ann the good chance of a change to fresh forest air.
+
+When my uncle had given his bidding, I made so bold as to beseech him
+with coaxing words that he would bid her go with me.  And if any should
+deem that it was but a light matter to ask of a good-hearted old man that
+he should harbor a fair young maid for a while, in a large and wealthy
+house, he will be mistaken, inasmuch as my uncle was wont, at all times
+and in all places, to have regard first to his wife's goodwill and
+pleasure.
+
+This lady was a Behaim, of the same noble race as my mother, whom God
+keep; and what great pride she set on her ancient and noble blood she had
+plainly proven in the matter of her son's love-match.  This matter had in
+truth no less heavily stricken his father's soul, but he had held his
+peace, inasmuch as he could never bring himself to play the lord over his
+wife; albeit he was in other matters a strict and thorough man; nay a
+right stern master, who ruled the host of foresters and hewers, warders
+and beaters, bee-keepers and woodmen who were under him with prudence and
+straitness.  And yet my aunt Jacoba was a feeble, sickly woman, who
+rarely went forth to drink in God's fresh air in the lordly forest,
+having lost the use of her feet, so that she must be borne from her couch
+to her bed.
+
+My uncle knew her full well, and he knew that she had a good and pitiful
+heart and was minded to do good to her kind; nevertheless he said his
+power over her would not stretch to the point of making her take a
+scrivener's child into her noble house, and entertaining her as an equal.
+Thus he withstood my fondest prayers, till he granted so much as that Ann
+should come and speak for herself or ever he should leave the house.
+
+When she had hastily greeted my cousin and me, and Cousin Maud had told
+her who my uncle was, she went up to him in her decent way, made him a
+curtsey, and held out her hand, no whit abashed, while her great eyes
+looked up at him lovingly, inasmuch as she had heard all that was good of
+him from me.
+
+Thereupon I saw in the old forester's face that he was "on the scent" of
+my Ann--to use his own words--so I took heart again and said: "Well,
+little uncle?"
+
+"Well," said he slowly and doubtingly.  But he presently uplifted Ann's
+chin, gazed her in the face, and said: "To be sure, to be sure!  Peaches
+get they red cheeks better where we dwell than here among stone walls."
+And he pulled down his belt and went on quickly, as though he weened that
+he might have to rue his hasty words: "Margery is to be our welcome guest
+out in the forest; and if she should bring thee with her, child, thou'lt
+be welcome."
+
+Nor need I here set down how gladly the bidding was received; and Ann's
+parents were more than content to let her go.  Thenceforth had Cousin
+Maud, and our house maids, and Beata the tailor-wife, enough on their
+hands; for they deemed it a pleasure to take care to outfit Ann as well
+as me, since there were many noble guests at the forest lodge, especially
+about St. Hubert's day, when there was ever a grand hunt.
+
+Dame Giovanna, Ann's mother, was in truth at all times choicely clad,
+and she ever kept Ann in more seemly and richer habit than others of her
+standing; yet she was greatly content with the summer holiday raiment
+which Cousin Maud had made for us.  Likewise, for each of us, a green
+riding habit, fit for the forest, was made of good Florence cloth; and if
+ever two young maids rode out with glad and thankful hearts into the
+fair, sunny world, we were those maids when, on Saint Margaret's day in
+the morning--[The 13th July, old style.]--we bid adieu and, mounted on
+our saddles, followed Balzer, the old forester, whom my uncle had sent
+with four men at arms on horseback to attend us, and two beasts of
+burthen to carry Susan and the "woman's gear."
+
+As we rode forth at this early hour, across the fields, and saw the lark
+mount singing, we likewise lifted up our voices, and did not stop singing
+till we entered the wood.  Then in the dewy silence our minds were turned
+to devotion and a Sabbath mood, and we spoke not of what was in our
+minds; only once--and it seems as I could hear her now--these simple
+words rose from Ann's heart to her lips: "I am so thankful!"
+
+And I was thankful at that hour, with my whole heart; and as the great
+hills of the Alps cover their heads with pure snow as they get nearer to
+heaven, so should every good man or woman, when in some happy hour he
+feels God's mercy nigh him, deck his heart with pure and joyful
+thanksgiving.
+
+At last we drew up on a plot shut in by tall trees, in front of a bee-
+keeper's hut, and while we were there, refreshing on some new milk and
+the store Cousin Maud had put into our saddle bags, we heard the barking
+of hounds and a noise of hoofs, and ere long Uncle Conrad was giving us a
+welcome.
+
+He was right glad to let us wait upon him and fell to with a will; but
+he made us set forth again sooner than was our pleasure, and as we fared
+farther the old forest rang with many a merry jest and much laughter.
+To Ann it seemed that my uncle was but now opening her eyes and ears to
+the mystery of the forest, which Gotz had shown me long years ago.  How
+many a bird's pipe did he teach her to know which till now she had never
+marked!  And each had its special significance, for my uncle named them
+all by their names and described them; whereas his son could copy them so
+as to deceive the ear, twittering, singing, whistling and calling, each
+after his kind.  To the end that Ann and my uncle should learn to come
+together closely I put no word into his teaching.
+
+Not till we came to the skirts of the clearing, where the forest lodge
+came in sight against the screen of trees, was my uncle silent; then,
+while he lifted me from the saddle, he asked me in a low tone if I had
+already warned Ann of my aunt's strange demeanor.  This I could tell him
+I had indeed done; nevertheless I saw by his face that he was not easy
+till he could lead Ann to his wife, and had learnt that the maid had
+found such favor in her eyes as, in truth, nor he nor I were so bold as
+to hope.  But with what sweet dignity did the clerk's daughter kiss the
+somewhat stern lady's hand--as I had bidden her, and how modestly, though
+with due self-respect, did she go through Dame Jacoba's inquisition.  For
+my part I should have lost patience all too soon, if I had thus been
+questioned touching matters concerning myself alone; but Ann kept calm
+till the end, and at the same time she spoke as openly as though the
+inquisitor had been her own mother.  This, in truth, somewhat moved me to
+fear; for, albeit I likewise cling to the truth, meseemed it showed it a
+lack of prudence and foresight to discover so freely and frankly all that
+was poor or lacking in her home; inasmuch as there was much, even there,
+which could not be better or more seemly in the richest man's dwelling.
+In truth, to my knowledge there was not the smallest thing in the little
+house by the river of which a virtuous damsel need feel ashamed.  But at
+night, in our bed-chamber, Ann confessed to me that she had taken it as a
+favor of fortune that she should be allowed, at once, to lay bare to the
+great lady who had been so unwilling to open her doors to her, exactly
+what she was and to whom she belonged.
+
+"To be deemed unworthy of heed by my lady hostess," said she, "would have
+been hard to bear; but whereas she truly cared to question me, a simple
+maid, and I have nothing hid, all is clear and plain betwixt us."
+
+My aunt doubtless thought in like manner; for she was a truthful woman,
+and Ann's honest, firm, and withal gentle way had won her heart.  And
+yet, since she was strait in her opinions, and must deem it unseemly in
+me and my kinsfolk to receive a maid of lower birth as one of ourselves,
+she stoutly avowed that Ann's worthy father, as being chief clerk in the
+Chancery, might claim to be accounted one of the Council.  Never, as she
+said to my uncle, would she have suffered a workingman's daughter to
+cross her threshold, whereas she had a large place, not alone at her
+table but in her heart, for this gentle daughter of a worthy member of
+the worshipful Council.
+
+And such speech was good to my ears and to my uncle Conrad's; but the
+best of all was that already, by the end of a week or two, Ann seemed
+likely to supplant me wholly in the love my aunt had erewhile shown to
+me; Ann thenceforth was diligent in waiting on the sick lady, and such
+loving duty won her more and more of my uncle's love, who found his
+weakly, suffering wife much on his hands, and that in the plainest sense
+of the words, since, whenever he might be at home, she would allow no
+other creature to lift her from one spot to another.
+
+Now, whereas Uncle Conrad had taught Ann to mark the divers voices of the
+forest, so did she open my eyes to the many virtues of my aunt, which,
+heretofore, I had been wont to veil from my own sight out of wrath at her
+hardness to my cousin Gotz.
+
+Ann, in her compassion and thankfulness, had truly learnt to love her,
+and she now led me to perceive that she was in many ways a right wise and
+good woman.  Her low, sheltered couch in the peaceful chimney-corner was,
+as it were, the centre of a wide net, and she herself the spider-wife who
+had spun it, for in truth her good counsel stretched forth over the whole
+range of forest, and over all her husband's rough henchmen.  She knew the
+name of every child in the furthest warders' huts, and never did she
+suffer one of the forest folks to die unholpen.  She was, indeed, forced
+to see with other eyes and give with other hands than her own, and
+notwithstanding this she ever gave help where it was most needed, since
+she chose her messengers well and lent an ear to all who sought her.
+
+She soon found work for us, making us do many a Samaritan-task; and many
+a time have we marvelled to mark the skill with which she wove her web,
+and the wisdom coupled with her open-handed bounty.
+
+No one else could have found a place in the great books which she filled
+with her records; but to her they were so clear that the craft of the
+most cunning was put to shame when she looked into them.  Never a soul,
+whether master or man, said her nay in the lightest thing, to my
+knowledge, and this was a plea for the one fault which had hitherto set
+me against her.
+
+Everything here was new to Ann; and what could be more delightful, what
+could give me greater joy than to be able to show all that was noteworthy
+and pleasant, and to me well-known, to a well-beloved friend, and to tell
+her the use and end of each thing.  In this two men were ever ready to
+help me: Uncle Conrad and the young Baron von Kalenbach, a Swabian who
+had come to be my uncle's disciple and to learn forestry.
+
+This same young Baron was a slender stripling, well-grown and not ill-
+favored; but it seemed as though his lips were locked, and if a man was
+fain to hear the sound of his voice and get from him a "yea" or "nay"
+there was no way but by asking him a plain question.  His eye, on the
+other hand, was full of speech, and by the time I had been no more than
+three weeks at the Lodge it told me, as often as it might, that he was
+deeply in love with me; nay, he told the reverend chaplain in so many
+words that his first desire was that he might take me home as his wife
+to Swabia, where he had rich estates.
+
+Never would I have said him yea, albeit I liked him well; nor did I hide
+it from him; nay indeed, now and again I may have lent him courage,
+though truly with no evil intent, since I was not ill pleased with the
+tale his eyes told me.  And I was but a young thing then, and wist not as
+yet that a maid who gives hope to a suitor though she has no mind to hear
+him, is guilty of a sin grievous enough to bring forth much sorrow and
+heart-ache.  It was not till I had had a lesson which came upon me all
+too soon, that I took heed in such matters; and the time was at hand when
+men folks thought more about me than I deemed convenient.
+
+As I have gone so far as to put this down on paper, I, an old woman now,
+will put aside bashfulness and freely confess that both Ann and I were at
+that time well-favored and good to look upon.
+
+I was of the greater height and stouter build, while she was more slender
+and supple; and for gentle sweetness I have never seen her like.  I was
+rose and white, and my golden hair was no whit less fine than Ursula
+Tetzel's; but whoso would care to know what we were to look upon in our
+youth, let him gaze on our portraits, before which each one of you has
+stood many a time.  But I will leave speaking of such foolish things and
+come now to the point.
+
+Though for most days common wear was good enough at the Forest Lodge,
+we sometimes had occasion to wear our bravery, for now and again we went
+forth to hunt with my uncle or with the Junker, on foot or on horseback,
+or hawking with a falcon on the wrist.  There was no lack of these noble
+birds, and the bravest of them all, a falcon from Iceland beyond seas,
+had been brought thence by Seyfried Kubbeling of Brunswick.  That same
+strange man, who was my right good friend, had ere now taught me to
+handle a falcon, and I could help my uncle to teach my friend the art.
+
+I went out shooting but seldom, by reason that Ann loved it not ever
+after she had hit one of the best hounds in the pack with her arrow;
+and my uncle must have been well affected to her to forgive such a shot,
+inasmuch as the dogs were only less near his heart than his closest kin.
+They had to make up to him for much that he lacked, and when he stood in
+their midst he saw round him, yelping and barking on four legs, well nigh
+all that he had thought most noteworthy from his childhood up.  They bore
+names, indeed, of no more than one or two syllables, but each had its
+sense.  They were for the most part the beginning of some word which
+reminded him of a thing he cared to remember.  First he had, in sport,
+named some of them after the metrical feet of Latin verse, which had been
+but ill friends of his in his school days, and in his kennel there was a
+Troch, Iamb, Spond and Dact, whose full names were Trochee, Iambus,
+Spondee and Dactyl.  Now Spond was the greatest and heaviest of the
+wolfhounds; Anap, rightly Anapaest, was a slender and swift greyhound;
+and whereas he found this pastime of names good sport he carried it
+further.  Thus it came to pass that the witless creatures who shared his
+loneliness were reminders of many pleasant things.  One of a pair of
+fleet bloodhounds which were ever leashed together was named Nich, and
+the other Syn, in memory that he had been betrothed on the festival of
+Saint Nicodemus and wedded on Saint Synesius' day.  A noble hound called
+Salve, or as we should say Welcome, spoke to him of the birth of his
+first born, and every dog in like manner had a name of some
+signification; thus Ann took it not at all amiss that he should call a
+fine young setter after her name.  There had long been a Gred, short for
+Margaret.
+
+Nevertheless we spent much more time in seeing the sick to whom my aunt
+sent us on her errands, than we did in shooting or heron-hawking.  She
+ever packed the little basket we were to carry with her own hands, and
+there was never a physic which she did not mingle, nor a garment she had
+not made choice of, nor a victual she had not judged fit for each one it
+was sent to.
+
+Thus many a time our souls ached to see want and pain lying in darksome
+chambers on wretched straw, though we earned thanks and true joy when we
+saw that healing and ease followed in our steps.  And whatever seemed to
+me the most praiseworthy grace in my Aunt Jacoba, was, that albeit she
+could never hear the hearty thanksgiving of those she had comforted and
+healed, she nevertheless, to the end of her days, ceased not from caring
+for the poor folks in the forest like a very mother.
+
+My Ann was never made for such work, inasmuch as she could never endure
+to see blood or wounds; yet was it in this tending of the sick that I had
+reason to mark and understand how strong was the spirit of this frail,
+slender flower.
+
+Since a certain army surgeon, by name Haberlein, had departed this life,
+there was no leech at the Forest lodge, but my aunt and the chaplain, a
+man of few words but well trained in good works and a right pious servant
+of the Lord, were disciples of Galen, and the leech from Nuremberg came
+forth once a week, on each Tuesday; and since the death of Doctor Paul
+Rieter, of whom I have made mention, it was his successor Master
+Ulsenius.  His duty it was to attend on the sick mistress, and on any
+other sick folks if they needed it; and then it was our part to wait on
+the leech, and my aunt would diligently instruct us in the right way to
+use healing drugs, or bandages.
+
+The first time we were bidden to a woman who gathered berries, who had
+been stung in the toe by an adder; and when I set to work to wash the
+wound, as my aunt had taught me, Ann turned as white as a linen cloth.
+And whereas I saw that she was nigh swooning I would not have her help;
+but she gave her help nevertheless, though she held her breath and half
+turned away her face.  And thus she ever did with sores; but she ever
+paid the penalty of the violence she did herself.  As it fell Master
+Ulsenius came to the Forest one day when my aunt's waiting-woman had
+fared forth on a pilgrimage to Vierzelmheiligen, and my uncle likewise
+being out of the way, the leech called us to him to lend him a helping
+hand.  Then I came to know that a fall unawares with her horse had been
+the beginning of my aunt's long sickness.  She had at that time done her
+backbone a mischief, and some few months later a wound had broken forth
+which was part of her hurt.
+
+Now when all was made ready Aunt Jacoba begged of Ann that she should
+hold the sore closed while Master Ulsenius made the linen bands wet.  I
+remembered my friend's weakness and came close to her, to take her place
+unmarked; but she whispered: "Nay, leave me," in a commanding voice, so
+that I saw full well she meant it in earnest, and withdrew without a
+word.  And then I beheld a noble sight; for though she was pale she did
+as she was bidden, nor did she turn her eyes off the wound.  But her
+bosom rose and fell fast, as if some danger threatened her, and her
+nostrils quivered, and I was minded to hold out my arms to save her from
+falling.  But she stood firm till all was done, and none but I was aware
+of her having defied the base foe with such true valor.
+
+Thenceforth she ever did me good service without shrinking; and
+whensoever thereafter I had some hateful duty to do which meseemed I
+might never bring myself to fulfil, I would remember Ann holding my
+aunt's wound.  And out of all this grew the good saying, "They who will,
+can"--which the children are wont to call my motto.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+As every word came straight from her heart
+Be cautious how they are compassionate
+Beware lest Satan find thee idle!
+Brought imagination to bear on my pastimes
+Comparing their own fair lot with the evil lot of others
+Faith and knowledge are things apart
+Flee from hate as the soul's worst foe
+For the sake of those eyes you forgot all else
+Her eyes were like open windows
+Last Day we shall be called to account for every word we utter
+Laugh at him with friendly mockery, such as hurts no man
+Maid who gives hope to a suitor though she has no mind to hear
+May they avoid the rocks on which I have bruised my feet
+Men folks thought more about me than I deemed convenient
+No man gains profit by any experience other than his own
+One of those women who will not bear to be withstood
+The god Amor is the best schoolmaster
+They who will, can
+When men-children deem maids to be weak and unfit for true sport
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARGERY, BY GEORG EBERS, V1 ***
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