ready to share our
poverty with us, and the unresting up-stairs and down had long been a
torment to her old feet.

The Magister was a well-disposed man, and if he found it an over-hard
matter to depart from us we might very gladly let him board with us, if
he could be content to live with us in her little house in the
Grassmarket, in which Rosmuller now dwelt. There was no lack of good
home-spun cloth in Nuremberg; nay, and if we should never again have new
garments that would be all the better for our souls' health. As for me, I
might perchance have fewer suitors, but if one should pay his court to
me, he would have no thought but for Margery, and how she looked and
moved. Nay, take it for all in all, we owed much thanks to Ursula and the
reprobate heathen Sultan if we were by their means brought low from
ill-starred wealth and ease to God-pleasing poverty.

Ann was far less horror-struck at the fearful sum of the ransom than we
had been, by reason that she was ever possessed by the assurance that
Heaven had created her and Herdegen for each other, and would bring them
together at last.

Moreover she had good cause to build her hopes on my grand-uncle's help.
In a letter from the Cardinal to her he said that now, as of old, he
could only counsel her to follow the voice of her heart; that he would
put no hindrance in the way of our departing, albeit he urgently prayed
us to put it off till after his homecoming, which should now be in a
short space. She was to let Baron Im Hoff know that he was ready to do
his will, albeit he hoped at his coming to find him in mended health. She
had forthwith carried these good tidings to my grand-uncle, and they had
so uplifted and comforted his heart that verily it seemed as though my
lord Cardinal's good hopes might find fulfilment. And this very morning
she had seen him, and a right strange mind had come over him; he had
enquired of her straitly, and as though it was to him a great matter, all
that she could tell him of my lord Cardinal's way of life, of the duties
of his office and the like; and whereas she answered him that of all
these matters she knew but little, yet had she heard from his own mouth
that his eminence was bound in thankfulness to his Holiness the Pope, by
reason that he had made him to be high Almoner of the Papal treasury and
thus put it into his power to do many good works; and this she deemed,
had brought great easement to my granduncle. Then when she rose t