the favor of Heaven, so far more
highly graced in all ways than I, who have never been other than middling
gifted, it would ill-become me to shrink from relating matters whereof I
myself have lived to repent.

There, by the ditch, was my dear only brother, weary and pale, a man
marked for an early grave; and in front of me, within a few paces, the
woman to whom my heart's only and fervent love had been given even as a
child. She sat like a King's daughter on a noble white horse with rich
trappings. A magnificent garment of fine cloth, richly broidered with
Flanders velvet, flowed about her slender body. The color thereof was
white and sapphire-blue, and so likewise were the velvet cap and
finely-rounded ostrich feather, which was fastened into it with a brooch
of sparkling precious stones. I had always deemed her fairest in sheeny
white, and she knew it, while Herdegen had taken blue for his color; and
behold she wore both, for love per chance of both brothers. Never had I
seen her fairer than at this minute and she had likewise waxed of a buxom
comeliness, and how sweet were her red cheeks, and swan-white skin, and
ebony-black hair, which flowed out from beneath her little hat in long
plaits twined with white and sapphire-blue velvet ribbon.

Never did a maid seem more desirable to a man. And her father on his
great brown horse--he was no more a craftsman! In his councillor's robes
bordered with fur, with the golden chain round his neck, his
well-favored, grave, and manly countenance, and the long, flowing hair
down to his shoulders, meseemed he might have been the head of some
ancient and noble family. None in Nuremberg might compare with these two
for manly dignity and womanly beauty, and was that sickly, bent horseman
by the ditch worthy of them? "No, no," cried a voice in my heart. "Yes,
Yes!" cried another; and in the midst of this struggle I could but say to
myself: "He has an old and good right to her, and as soon as he has found
breath he will claim it."

But she? What will she do; how will she demean her; is she aware of his
presence? Will she shrink from him as Dame Gossenprot did at Augsburg,
and the inn-keeper's smart wife at Ingolstadt, who of old was so
over-eager to be at his service? Would Ann, who had rejected many a
lordly suitor, be as sweet as of yore to that breathless creature? And if
she were to follow the example which he long since set her, if she now
cut the bond which he of old had snatche