f dancing with Ann, and so soon as
the town pipers struck up, with cornets, trumpets, horns, and haut-boys,
fiddles, sack-buts and rebecks, the rattle of drums and the groaning of
bagpipes, while the Swiss fifes squeaked shrilly above the clatter of
the kettle-drums, methought the music itself flung him in the air and
brought him low again. With his free and mirthful ways he carried all
before him, and when presently it was plain to all that he could outdo
our nimblest dancers, and was a master of each kind of dance which was
held in favor at every court, whether of Brandenburg, of Saxony, of
Bohemia, or at our own Emperor Sigismund's Hungarian court, he was ere
long entreated to show us some new figures of the dance; nor was he loth
to do so.

Nay, he presently went to such lengths that our Franconian and Nuremberg
nobles could but turn away their faces, inasmuch as he began so wild and
unseemly a dance as was overmuch even for me, despite my youth and sheer
delight in the quick measure.

My Hans, the young councillor, took pleasure in leading me forth in the
Polish dance, or with due dignity in the Swabian figure, but he held
back, as was fitting, from the mad whirl of the gipsy dance and of the
"Dove dance;" and he, and I likewise, courteously withstood his bidding
to join in the Dance of the Dead as it was in use in Brandenburg,
Hungary, and Schleswig: one has to be for dead, and as he lieth another
shall come to wake him with a kiss. On this Junker von Beust, who was,
as the march--men say, the dance-corpse, entrapped Ann in a strange
adventure. Ann kissed not his cheek, but in the air near by it, and the
bold knave, who had no mind to forego so sweet a boon, declared to her
after the dance was over that she was his debtor, and that he would give
her no peace till she should pay him his due.

Ann courteously prayed him that he would be a merciful creditor and
remit the payment of that she had indeed omitted, though truly out of
no ill-will. And whereas he would by no means consent, the dispute was
taken up by others present and Jorg Loffelholz devised the fancy of
holding a Court of Love to decide the case.

This met with noisy approval, and albeit I and my dear Hans, and some
others with us, made protest, the damsels were presently seated in a
circle and Jorg Loffelholz, who was chosen to preside, asked of each to
pronounce sentence. Thus it came to the turn of Ursula Tetzel and she,
looking round on Junker He