atter,
and who lives alone for more days in the year than ever we dreamed the
morning we were wed."

Hereupon we went forth together; and I took his counsel to heart, and
Gotz never left me for any long space of time, save when he must.

As for Kubbeling, he kept his word and departed from us on the morrow
morning; yet we often saw him again after that time, and the finest
falcon in our mews is that he sent us as a wedding gift; and after our
marriage Ann received a fine colored parrot as a gift from old Uhlwurm,
and the old man had made it speak for her in such wise that it could say
right plainly: "Uhlwurm is Ann's humble servant."

We now spent two days at the forest lodge in bliss, as though paradise
had come down on earth; and albeit it is a perilous thing to rejoice in
the love of a man who has wandered far beyond seas, yet has it this good
side: that many matters which to another seem far away and out of reach,
he deems near at hand, and half the world is his as it were. And how well
could Gotz make me to feel as though I shared his possession!

On the morning of the third day after his coming, my lord Cardinal rode
forth to the forest with Ann; and, inasmuch as the duties of his office
now led, him to sojourn in Wurzberg and Bamberg, he could promise us that
he would bless our union or ever he departed to Italy. Albeit methought
it would be a happy chance if we might stand at the altar at the same
time with Herdegen and Ann, Gotz's impatience, which had waxed no lesser
even during his journeyings, was set against our waiting for my brother's
coming. Likewise he desired that we might live together a space as man
and wife, before he should go to Venice to get his release from the
service of the Republic.

At the same time he deemed it not prudent to take me with him on that
journey, howbeit, after that we were wed, when he was about to depart, I
made so bold as to beseech him; and he plainly showed me that I had not
made him wroth or troubled him whereas he willingly granted me to journey
with him, and without reproof. Thus I fared with him to the great and
mighty city of Saint Mark, which I had ever longed to behold with my
bodily eyes. I never went beyond seas, yet we journeyed as far as Rome,
and there, under the protection and guidance of my lord Cardinal, I spent
many never-to-be-forgotten days by the side of my Gotz.

But one thing at a time; some day, if my many years may suffer, I will
write more con