death snatched from her Ann Schopper, the widow of our late dear brother
Herdegen Schopper and her heart's best friend, and this fell upon her
soul as so cruel a grief that she never after could endure to take up the
pen.

Then, when she lost her dearly-beloved husband, a few months after their
golden wedding day, all was at an end for her; the brave old woman gave
up all care for life, and died no more than three months after him. And
indeed often have I seen how that, when one of a pair, who have dwelt
together so many years in true union of hearts, departs this life, this
earth is too lonely for the other, so that one might deem that their
hearts had grown to be as it were one flesh, and the one that is left
hath bled to death inwardly from the Reaper's stroke.

Then I read through this book of memories once more, and meseemed that
Margery had written of herself as less worthy than of a truth she was in
her life's spring-tide.

Most of you can yet remember how that my lord the Mayor spoke of the
bride with the golden chaplet crowning her thick silver hair, as the
pride of our city, the best friend and even at times the wisest
counsellor of our worshipful Council, the comforter and refuge of the
poor; and you know full well that Master Johannes Lochner, the priest,
spoke over her open grave, saying that, as in her youth she had been
fairest, so in old age she was the noblest and most helpful of all the
dames of the parish of Saint Sebald; and you yourselves have many a time
been her almoners, or have gazed in silence to admire her portrait.

And at Venice I have heard from the lips of the very master who limned
her, and who was one of the greatest painters of the famous guild to
which he belonged, that such as she had he imagined the stately queen of
some ancient German King defeated by the Romans, or Eve herself, if
indeed one might conceive of our cold German fatherland as Paradise. Yea,
the most charming and glowing woman he had ever set eyes on was your
mother and grandmother.

And whensoever she went to a dance all the young masters of noble birth,
and the counts and knights, yea even at the Emperor's court, were of one
mind in saying that Margery Schopper was the fairest and likewise the
most happy-tempered maid and most richly endowed with gifts of the mind,
in all Nuremberg. None but Ann could stand beside her, and her beauty was
Italian and heavenly rather than German and earthly.

Margery's manuscrip