Dietel did not lose sight of the envoys. After whispering together a
short time they had risen and gone out. At the door the Abbot of
St. AEgidius left them to greet Professor Kollin, and, with the easy
kindness characteristic of him, to say that the room had become too
warm for the other gentlemen. They presented their compliments to the
distinguished citizen of Cologne, and placed their table at the service
of the newcomer.
Dietel's sharp ears had enabled him to catch these words; but then he
was obliged to move again, a table had to be set outside the house for
the Nuremberg travellers and their companions, and jugs of wine must be
filled for them.
Then he was called back to the taproom. While the landlord of The Pike
was serving a fresh meal to Professor Kollin at the table vacated by
the Nuremberg dignitaries, and Arnold von Tungern was emptying the
full vials of his wrath upon the little doctor and the whole body of
humanists, the Nuremberg travellers and their guests were now conversing
freely, as if relieved from a nightmare, upon the topics which most
deeply interested them.
Dietel would far rather have served the Cologne theologians, whom
he regarded as the appointed defenders of the true faith, than the
insignificant folk at the other tables who had just finished their meal.
How unmannerly their behaviour was! Better wine had been served before
dessert, and they now shouted and sang so loudly and so out of tune
that the air played by the strolling musicians could scarcely be
distinguished. Many a table, too, groaned under blows from the clinched
fist of some excited reveller. Every one seemed animated by a single
desire-to drink again and again.
Now the last pieces of bread and the cloths were removed from the
tables. The carousers no longer needed Dietel. He could leave the task
of filling the jugs to his young assistants.
What were the envoys outside doing? They were well off. In here the
atmosphere was stifling from the fumes emanating from the throng of
people, the wine, and the food. It seemed to draw all the flies from
far and near. Whence did they come? They seemed to have increased by
thousands since the early morning, when the room was empty. The outside
air appeared delightful to breathe. He longed to fill his lungs again
with the pure wind of heaven, and at the same time catch a few words of
the conversation between the envoys to the Reichstag.
So Dietel hobbled to the open window, where the strollers were resting.
Cyriax was lying on the floor asleep, with the brandy bottle in his
arms. Two of his companions, with their mouths wide open, were snoring
at his side. Raban, who begged for blood-money, was counting the copper
coins which he had received. Red-haired Gitta was sewing another patch
of cloth upon her rough husband's already well-mended jerkin by the dim
light of a small lamp, into which she had put some fat and a bit of rag
for a wick. It was difficult to thread the needle. Had it not been for
the yellow blaze of the pitchpans fastened to the wall with iron
clamps, which had already been burning an hour, she could scarcely have
succeeded.
"Make room there," the waiter called to the vagrants, giving the
sleeping Jungel a push with his club foot. The latter grasped his
crutch, as he had formerly seized the sword he carried as a foot soldier
ere he lost his leg before Padua. Then, with a Spanish oath learned
in the Netherlands, he turned over, still half asleep, on his side. So
Dietel found room, and, after vainly looking for Kuni among the others,
gazed out at the starlit sky.
Yonder, in front of the house, beside the tall oleanders which grew
in wine casks cut in halves instead of in tubs, the learned and
aristocratic gentlemen sat around the table with outstretched heads,
examining by the light of the torches the pages which Dr. Eberbach drew
forth, one after another, from the inexhaustible folds of the front of
his black robe.
Dietel, the schoolmaster's son, who had once sat on the bench with the
pupils of the Latin class, pricked up his cars; he heard foreign words
which interested him like echoes of memories of his childhood. He did
not understand them, yet he liked to listen, for they made him think of
his dead father. He had always meant kindly, but he had been a morose,
deeply embittered man. How pitilessly he had flogged him and the other
boys with hazel rods. And he would have been still harsher and sterner
but for his mother's intercession.
A pleasant smile hovered around his lips as he remembered her. Instead
of continuing to listen to the Greek sentences which Herr Wilibald
Pirckheimer was reading aloud to the others, he could not help thinking
of the pious, gentle little woman who, with her cheerful kindness, so
well understood how to comfort and to sustain courage. She never railed
or scolded; at the utmost she only wiped her eyes with her apron when
the farmers of his little native town in Hesse sent to the schoolmaster,
for the school tax, grain too bad for bread, hay too sour for the three
goats, and half-starved fowls.
He thoughtfully patted the plump abdomen which, thanks to the fleshpots
of The Blue Pike, had grown so rotund in his fifteen years of service.
"It pays better to provide for people's bodies than for their brains,"
he said to himself. "The Nuremberg and Augsburg gentlemen outside are
rich folk's children. For them learning is only the raisins, almonds,
and citron in the cake; knowledge agrees with them better than it did
with my father. He was the ninth child of respectable stocking weavers,
but, as the pastor perceived that he was gifted with special ability,
his parents took a portion of their savings to make him a scholar. The
tuition fee and the boy were both confided to a Beanus--that is, an
older pupil, who asserted that he understood Latin--in order that he
might look after the inexperienced little fellow and help him out of
school as well as in. But, instead of using for his protigee the florins
intrusted to him, the Beanus shamefully squandered the money saved for a
beloved child by so many sacrifices. While he feasted on roast meat and
wine, the little boy placed in his charge went hungry." Whenever, in
after years, the old man described this time of suffering, his son
listened with clinched fists, and when Dietel saw a Beanus at The Blue
Pike snatch the best pieces from the child in his care, he interfered
in his behalf sternly enough. Nay, he probably brought to him from the
kitchen, on his own account, a piece of roast meat or a sausage. Many
of the names which fell from the moist lips of the gentlemen
outside--Lucian and Virgil, Ovid and Seneca, Homer and Plato--were
perfectly familiar to him. The words the little doctor was reading must
belong to their writings. How attentively the others listened! Had not
Dietel run away from the monks' school at Fulda he, too, might have
enjoyed the witticisms of these sages, or even been permitted to sit at
the same table with the great lights of the Church from Cologne.
Now it was all over with studying.
And yet--it could not be so very serious a matter, for Doctor Eberbach
had just read something aloud at which the young Nuremberg ambassador,
Lienhard Groland, could not help laughing heartily. It seemed to amuse
the others wonderfully, too, and even caused the astute Dr. Peutinger to
strike his clinched fist upon the table with the exclamation, "A devil
of a fellow!" and Wilibald Pirckheimer to assent eagerly, praising
Hutten's ardent love for his native land and courage in battling for its
elevation; but this Hutten whom he so lauded was the ill-advised scion
of the knightly race that occupied Castle Steckelberg in his Hessian
home, whom he knew well. The state of his purse was evident from the
fact that the landlord of The Pike had once been obliged to detain him
because he could not pay the bill--though it was by no means large--in
any other coin than merry tales.
But even the best joke of the witty knight would have failed to produce
its effect on the listening waiter just now; for the gentlemen outside
were again discussing the Reuchlin controversy, and in doing so uttered
such odious words about the Cologne theologians, whom Dietel knew as
godly gentlemen who consumed an ample supply of food, that he grew hot
and cold by turns. He was a good man who would not hurt a fly. Yet, when
he heard things and opinions which his mother had taught him to hold
sacred assailed, he could become as angry as a savage brute. The little
impious blasphemer Eberbach, especially, he would have been more than
ready to lash with the best hazel rod which he had ever cut for his dead
father. But honest anger affords a certain degree of enjoyment, so it
was anything rather than agreeable to him to be called away.
The feather curler and his table companions wanted Kitzing wine, but
it was in the cellar, and a trip there would have detained him too long
from his post of listener. So he turned angrily back into the room, and
told the business men that princes, bishops, and counts were satisfied
with the table wine of The Blue Pike, which had been already served to
them, and the sceptre and crozier were of more importance than their
twisted feathers. "Those are not the wisest people," he added sagely,
"who despise what is good to try to get better. So stick to the
excellent Blue Pike wine and say no more about it!"
Without waiting for an answer from the astonished guests, he limped back
to his window to resume his listening. The conversation, however, had
already taken a new turn, for Dr. Peutinger was describing the Roman
monument which he had had put up in the courtyard of his Augsburg house,
but, as this interested Dietel very little, he soon turned his attention
to the high road, whence a belated guest might still come to The Blue
Pike.
The landlady's little kitchen garden lay between it and the river Main,
and there--no, it was no deception--there, behind the low hawthorn
hedge, a human figure was moving.
One of the vagabonds had certainly slipped into the garden to steal
fruit or vegetables, or even honey from the bee hives. An unprecedented
offence! Dietel's blood boiled, for the property of The Blue Pike was as
dear to him as his own.
With prompt decision he went through the entry into the yard, where
he meant to unchain the butcher's dog to help him chase the abominable
robber. But some time was to elapse ere he could execute this
praiseworthy intention; for before he could cross the threshold the
landlord of The Pike appeared, berated him, and ordered him to be more
civil in the performance of his duties. The words were intended less for
the waiter than for the feather dealer and his friends.
The latter had complained of Dietel to the landlord of The Pike, and,
after he had received a reproof, they punished him for his rudeness by
ordering him to fetch one jug of wine from the cellar after another. At
last, when, with many a malediction, he had brought up the fifth, his
tormentors released him, but then the best time was lost. Nevertheless
he continued the pursuit and entered the little garden with the dog, but
the thief had fled.
After assuring himself of this fact he stood still, rubbing his narrow
forehead with the tips of his fingers.
The rogue was most probably one of the vagrants, and like a flash it
entered his mind that the ropedancer, Kuni, who in her prosperous days,
instead of eating meat and vegetables, preferred to satisfy her appetite
with fruits and sweet dainties, might be the culprit. Besides, when he
had looked around among the guests just before, she was no longer with
the other vagabonds.
Certain of having found the right trail, he instantly went to the window
below which the strollers lay, thrust his head into the room from the
outside, and waked the wife of the tongueless swearer. She had fallen
asleep on the floor with the sewing in her hand. The terror with which
she started up at his call bore no favourable testimony to her good
conscience, but she had already recovered her bold unconcern when he
imperiously demanded to know what had become of lame Kuni.
"Ask the other travellers--the soldiers, the musicians, the monks, for
aught I care," was the scornful, irritating answer. But when Dietel
angrily forbade such insolent mockery, she cried jeeringly:
"Do you think men don't care for her because she has lost her foot and
has that little cough? You ought to know better.
"Master Dieter has a sweetheart for every finger, though the lower part
of his own body isn't quite as handsome as it might be."
"On account of my foot?" the waiter answered spitefully. "You'll soon
find that it knows how to chase. Besides, the Nuremberg city soldiers
will help me in the search. If you don't tell me at once where the girl
went--by St. Eoban, my patron----"
Here red-haired Gitta interrupted him in a totally different tone; she
and her companions had nothing good to expect from the city soldiers.
In a very humble manner she protested that Kuni was an extraordinarily
charitable creature. In a cart standing in the meadow by the highroad
lay the widow of a beggar, Nickel; whom the peasants had hung on account
of many a swindling trick. A goose and some chickens had strayed off to
his premises. The woman had just given birth to twins when Nickel was
hung, and she was now in a violent fever, with frequent attacks of
convulsions, and yet had to nurse the infants. The landlady of The Pike
had sent her some broth and a little milk for the children. As for Kuni,
she had gone to carry some linen from her own scanty store to the two
babies, who were as naked as little frogs. He would find her with the
sick mother.
All this flowed from Gitta's lips with so much confidence that Dietel,
whose heart was easily touched by such a deed of charity, though he by
no means put full confidence in her, allowed himself to be induced to
let the city soldiers alone for the present and test the truth of her
strange statement himself.
So he prepared to go in search of the cart, but the landlord of The
Pike met him at the door, and, angrily asking what ailed him that day,
ordered him to fetch the Erbach, more of which was wanted inside. Dietel
went down into the cellar again, but this time he was not to leave it
so speedily, for the apprentice of a Nuremberg master shoemaker, whose
employer was going to the Frankfort fair with his goods, and who made
common cause with the feather dealer, stole after Dietel, and of his own
volition, for his own pleasure, locked him in. The good Kitzing wine had
strengthened his courage. Besides, experience taught him that an offence
would be more easily pardoned the more his master himself disliked the
person against whom it was committed.