f unspeakable torment, albeit I knew from experience
that for such ills there was no remedy but perfect rest. I looked
away from him and beheld, a little nearer now, Ann high on her saddle,
diligently waving her kerchief, and at her side her father, lifting his
councillor's hat.

In a few moments we were united once more. But no....

As I wrote the foregoing words with a trembling hand I vowed that I
would set down nought but the truth and the whole truth. And inasmuch as
I have not shrunk from making mention of certain matters which many will
deem of small honor to Herdegen, who was, by the favor of Heaven, so far
more highly graced in all ways than I, who have never been other than
middling gifted, it would ill-become me to shrink from relating matters
whereof I myself have lived to repent.

There, by the ditch, was my dear only brother, weary and pale, a man
marked for an early grave; and in front of me, within a few paces, the
woman to whom my heart's only and fervent love had been given even as a
child. She sat like a King's daughter on a noble white horse with rich
trappings. A magnificent garment of fine cloth, richly broidered with
Flanders velvet, flowed about her slender body. The color thereof
was white and sapphire-blue, and so likewise were the velvet cap and
finely-rounded ostrich feather, which was fastened into it with a brooch
of sparkling precious stones. I had always deemed her fairest in sheeny
white, and she knew it, while Herdegen had taken blue for his color; and
behold she wore both, for love per chance of both brothers. Never had
I seen her fairer than at this minute and she had likewise waxed of
a buxom comeliness, and how sweet were her red cheeks, and swan-white
skin, and ebony-black hair, which flowed out from beneath her little hat
in long plaits twined with white and sapphire-blue velvet ribbon.

Never did a maid seem more desirable to a man. And her father on his
great brown horse--he was no more a craftsman! In his councillor's
robes bordered with fur, with the golden chain round his neck, his
well-favored, grave, and manly countenance, and the long, flowing hair
down to his shoulders, meseemed he might have been the head of some
ancient and noble family. None in Nuremberg might compare with these two
for manly dignity and womanly beauty, and was that sickly, bent horseman
by the ditch worthy of them? "No, no," cried a voice in my heart. "Yes,
Yes!" cried another; and in the midst of