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 he
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.