meseemed its splendor did but mock me, and many a time I deemed that my
heart's sorrow would be easier to bear with patience if it might but
rain, and rain and rain for ever. Yea, and a grey gloomy day would have
brought rest to eyes weary with weeping. And in my sick heart all was
dark indeed, albeit I had not been slow to learn how this terror had come
about.

That was all the tidings I had craved; as to how life should fare
henceforth I cared no more, but let what might befall without a wish or a
will. Sorrow was to me the end and intent of life. I spurned not my
grief, but rather cherished and fed it, as it were a precious child, and
nought pleased me so well as to cling to that alone.

Howbeit I seldom had the good hap to be left to humor this craving. I was
wroth with the hard and bitter world for its cruelty; yet it was in truth
that very world, and its pitiless call to duty, which at that time
rescued me from worse things. Verily I now bless each one who then strove
to rouse me from my selfish and gloomy sorrow, from the tailor who cut my
mourning weed to Ann, whose loving comfort even was less dear to me than
the solitude in which I might give myself up to bitter grieving. All I
cared for was to hear those who could tell of his last hours and
departing from this life, till at last meseemed I myself had witnessed
his end.

From all the tidings I could learn, I gathered that old Henneleinlein,
whose gall had been raised against me by the Court Fool, had no sooner
parted from us at Master Pernhart's door than she had hastened to the
school of arms to make known to Ursula that my brother had plighted his
troth anew to his cast-off sweetheart. Hereupon Ursula had dared to say
to the Junker that Herdegen was her knight, who would pick up his glove
which he had cast down at the former dance; but that he nevertheless was
playing a two-fold game, and had treacherously promised Ann to wed her,
to win her favor likewise. Hereupon the Brandenburger had been filled
with honest ire, had sworn to Ursula that he would chastise her false
lover, and was ready, not alone to accept my brother's defiance, but to
fight with ruthless fury.

Thus Ursula's plot had prospered right well, inasmuch as, so long as she
hoped to win Herdegen, she had been in deathly fear lest the Junker
should fall out with him; whereas, now that in her wrath she only desired
that the faithless wight should give an account to the Junker's sword,
she th