day and hour when
he had cast anchor there, wherefor he had chosen to lodge in the Genoa
Fondaco, when I last had seen him, nay, and of what stuff and color his
garments were made. She went through them all, from the feather in his
hat to his hose. As for me, I must have seemed well nigh half witted, and
I told her at last that I had no skill in such matters, but that I had
ever seen him of an evening in a white mantle with a peaked hood.
Hereupon the blood all left her face, and with it all her beauty. She
clapped her hand to her forehead like one possessed or in a fit, as
though caught in her own snare, and she would have fallen, if I had not
held her upright. And then, on a sudden, she stood firm on her feet, bid
me depart right roughly, and pointed to the door; and I was ready and
swift enough in departing. When I was telling of all this to Uhlwurm, who
had stayed without, and what I had heard concerning Junker Herdegen, he
had nought to say but that accursed 'Gone!' And how that dazes me, old
mole that I am, you yourselves have seen. But the demeanor of Mistress
Tetzel of Nuremberg, I have never had it out of my mind since, day or
night, nor again, yesterday."

He rubbed his damp brow, drank a draught, and took a deep breath; he was
not wont to speak at such length. But whereas we asked him many questions
of these matters, he turned again to us maidens, and said "Grant me a few
words apart from the matter you see, in time a man gets an eye for a
falcon, and sees what its good points are, and if it ails aught. He
learns to know the breed by its feathers, and breastbone, and the color
of its legs, and many another sign, and its temper by its eye and
beak;--and it is the same with knowing of men. All this I learned not of
myself, but from my father, God rest him; and like as you may know a
falcon by the beak, so you may know a man or a woman by the mouth. And as
I mind me of Mistress Ursula's face, as I saw it then, that is enough for
me. Aye, and I will give my best Iceland Gerfalcon for a lame crow if
every word she spoke concerning the death of Junker Herdegen was not
false knavery. She is a goodly woman and of wondrous beauty; yet, as I
sat erewhile, thinking and gazing into the Wurzburg wine in my cup, I
remembered her red lips and white teeth, as she bid me exhort his kin at
home to seek the lost man no more. And I will plainly declare what that
mouth brought to my mind; nought else than the muzzle of the she-wo