ng, and
with good cause, that a King should rule the Empire whose Realm of
Hungary, with the perils that beset it from the Ottoman Turks, the
Bohemians, and other foes, so filled his thoughts that he had neither
time, nor mind, nor money to bestow due care on his German States. His
treasury was ever empty; and what sums had the luckless war with Venice
alone swallowed up! He had not even found the money needful to go to Rome
to be crowned Emperor. He had failed to bring the contentious Princes of
the Empire under one hat, so to speak; and whereas his father, Charles
IV., had been called the Arch-stepfather of the German Empire, Sigismund,
albeit a large-hearted, shrewd, and unresting soul, deserved a scarce
better name, inasmuch as that he, like the former sovereign, when he fell
heir to his Bohemian fatherland, knew not how to deal even with that as a
true father should.

Not a week passed after Herdegen's departing but a letter by his own hand
came to Ann, and all full of faithful love. I, likewise, had, not so long
since, had such letters from another, and so it fell that these, which
brought great joy to Ann, did but make my sore heart ache the more. And
when I would rise from table silent and with drooping head, the Magister
would full often beg leave to follow me to my chamber, and comfort me
after his own guise. In all good faith would he lay books before my eyes,
and strive to beguile me to take pleasure in them as the best remedy
against heaviness of soul. The lives of the mighty heathen, as his
Plutarch painted them, would, he said, raise even a weak soul to their
greatness and the Consolatio Philosophiae of Boetius would of a surety
refresh my stricken heart. Howbeit, one single well-spent hour in life,
or one toilsome deed fruitful for good, hath at all times brought me
better comfort than a whole pile of pig-skin-covered tomes. Yet have
certain verses of the Scripture, or some wise and verily right noble
maxim from the writings of the Greeks or Latins dropped on my soul now
and again as it were a grain of good seed.

Sad to tell, those first letters from Herdegen, all dipped in sunshine,
were followed by others which could but fill us with fears. The pilgrims
had been over-long in getting so far as Venice, by reason that Sir Franz
had fallen sick after they had passed the Bienner, and my brother had
diligently and faithfully tended him. Thus it came to pass that another
child of Nuremberg, albeit setting f