ave looked over-long for
the old man's home-coming. I will set forth to-morrow early. To tell the
truth to none but you, I cannot endure to be away from the old place a
longer space than it takes to go to Alexandria and back. My old heart
is grown over-soft and weary for an absence of two journeys. And
yet another matter for your ear alone: You will be the wife of a
noblehearted man, but mind you, he has long been free to wander
whithersoever he would. Take it to heart that you make his home dear
and happy, else it will be with you as it is with my old woman, who hath
never mastered that matter, and who lives alone for more days in the
year than ever we dreamed the morning we were wed."

Hereupon we went forth together; and I took his counsel to heart, and
Gotz never left me for any long space of time, save when he must.

As for Kubbeling, he kept his word and departed from us on the morrow
morning; yet we often saw him again after that time, and the finest
falcon in our mews is that he sent us as a wedding gift; and after our
marriage Ann received a fine colored parrot as a gift from old Uhlwurm,
and the old man had made it speak for her in such wise that it could say
right plainly: "Uhlwurm is Ann's humble servant."

We now spent two days at the forest lodge in bliss, as though paradise
had come down on earth; and albeit it is a perilous thing to rejoice in
the love of a man who has wandered far beyond seas, yet has it this good
side: that many matters which to another seem far away and out of reach,
he deems near at hand, and half the world is his as it were. And how
well could Gotz make me to feel as though I shared his possession!

On the morning of the third day after his coming, my lord Cardinal rode
forth to the forest with Ann; and, inasmuch as the duties of his office
now led, him to sojourn in Wurzberg and Bamberg, he could promise us
that he would bless our union or ever he departed to Italy. Albeit
methought it would be a happy chance if we might stand at the altar at
the same time with Herdegen and Ann, Gotz's impatience, which had waxed
no lesser even during his journeyings, was set against our waiting for
my brother's coming. Likewise he desired that we might live together a
space as man and wife, before he should go to Venice to get his release
from the service of the Republic.

At the same time he deemed it not prudent to take me with him on that
journey, howbeit, after that we were wed, when he wa