would forget to eat and drink and
mislay or lose his hardly won wage. Once the town watch had to see him
home because, instead of a book, he was carrying a ham which a gossip had
given him; and another day he was seen speeding down the streets with his
nightcap on, to the great mirth of the lads and lasses.

Notwithstanding he showed himself no whit unworthy of the high praise
wherewith his Reverence the Prebendary had commended him, inasmuch as he
was not only a right learned, but likewise a faithful and longsuffering
teacher. But his wisdom profited Herdegen and Ann and me rather than
Kunz, though it was for his sake that he had come to us; and as, touching
this strange man's person, my cousin told me later that when she saw him
for the first time she took such a horror of his wretched looks that she
was ready to bid him depart and desire the Reverend doctor to send us
another governor. But out of pity she would nevertheless give him a
trial, and considering that I should ere long be fully grown, and that a
young maid's heart is a strange thing, she deemed that a younger teacher
might lead it into peril.

At the time when Master Pihringer came to dwell with us, Herdegen was
already high enough to pass into the upper school, for he was first in
his 'ordo'; but our guardian, the old knight Hans Im Hoff, of whom I
shall have much to tell, held that he was yet too young for the risks of
a free scholar's life in a high school away from home, and he kept him
two years more in Nuremberg at the school of the Brethren of the Holy
Ghost, albeit the teaching there was not of the best. At any rate Master
Pihringer avowed that in all matters of learning we were out of all
measure behind the Italians; and how rough and barbarous was the Latin
spoken by the reverend Fathers and taught by them in the schools, I
myself had later the means of judging.

Their way of imparting that tongue was in truth a strange thing; for to
fix the quantity of the syllables in the learners' mind, they were made
to sing verses in chorus, while one of them, on whose head Father
Hieronymus would set a paper cap to mark his office, beat the measure
with a wooden sword; but what pranks of mischief the unruly rout would be
playing all the time Kunz could describe better than I can.

The great and famous works of the Roman chroniclers and poets, which our
Master had come to know well in Italy--having besides fine copies of
them--were never heard of in the