, when I fell asleep in listening to
these fancies, which she loved to paint in every detail, behold my dreams
would be of Turks and heathen; and of bloody battles by land and sea.

No man may tell his dreams fasting; but as soon as I had eaten my first
mouthful she would bid me tell her all, to the veriest trifle, and would
solemnly seek the interpretation of every vision.

CHAPTER VIII.

My lord Cardinal had departed from Nuremberg some long while, by reason
that he was charged by his holiness the Pope with a mission which took
him through Cologne and Flanders to England. Inasmuch as he was not
suffered to have Ann herself in his company, he conceived the wish to
possess her likeness in a picture; and he sent hither to that end a
master of good fame, of the guild of painters in Venice. We owed this
good limner thanks for many a pleasant hour. Sir Giacomo Bellini was a
youth of right merry wit, knowing many Italian ditties, and who made good
pastime for us while we sat before him; for I likewise must be limned,
inasmuch as Cousin Maud would have it so, and the painter's eye was
greatly pleased by my yellow hair.

Whereas he could speak never a word of German, it was our part to talk
with him in Italian, and this exercise to me came not amiss. Also I could
scarce have had a better master to teach me than Giacomo Bellini, who set
himself forthwith to win my heart and turn my head; nay, and he might
have done so, but that he confessed from the first that he had a fair
young wife in Venice, albeit he was already craving for some new love.

Thus through him again I learned how light a touch is needed to overthrow
a man's true faith; and when I minded me of Herdegen and Ann, and of this
Giacomo--who was nevertheless a goodly and well-graced man--and his young
wife, meseemed that the woman who might win the love of a highly-gifted
soul must ofttimes pay for that great joy with much heaviness and
heartache.

Howbeit, I mind me in right true love of the mirthful spirit and manifold
sportiveness which marked our fellowship with the Italian limner; and
after that I had once given him plainly and strongly to understand that
the heart of a Nuremberg damsel was no light thing or plaything, and her
very lips a sanctuary which her husband should one day find pure, all
went well betwixt us.

The picture of Ann, the first he painted, showed her as Saint Cecelia
hearkening to music which sounds from Heaven in her ears. Two s