ttered as he moved and many little bells
twinkling merrily. Light and life beamed forth out of this gladsome
youth's blue eyes. He had never sat at a school-desk; while our boys had
been poring over their books, he had been riding with his father at a
hunt or a fray, or had lurked in ambush by the highway for the laden
wagons of those very "pepper sacks"--[A nickname for grocery
merchants]--whose good wine and fair daughters he was so far from
scorning in their own town-hall.

He had already fallen in love with Ann at the Hallerhof, and never quit
her side although, after I had overheard certain sharp words by which
Ursula Tetzel strove to lower the maid in his opinion, I told him plainly
of what rank and birth she was.

For this he cared not one whit; nay, it increased his pleasure in making
much of her and trying to spoil her shrewish foe's sport. It seemed as
though he could never have enough of 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 A