ended to look after their table
himself. Tomfoolery! There was more than enough for him to do that day
over yonder in the room occupied by the lansquenets and the city
soldiers, where he usually directed affairs in person. It roused Dietel's
ire. The cooking of The Blue Pike, which the landlady superintended,
could vie with any in the Frank country, on the Rhine, or in Swabia, yet,
forsooth, it wasn't good enough for the Nuremberg guests. The Council
cook, a fat, pompous fellow, accompanied them, and had already begun to
bustle about the hearth beside the hostess. They really would have
required no service at all, for they brought their own attendants. It
certainly was not Dietel's usual custom to wish any one evil, but if Gotz
Berlichinger, who had recently attacked a party of Leipsic merchants at
Forchheim, or Hans von Geisslingen had fallen upon them and subdued their
arrogance, it would not have spoiled Dietel's appetite.

At last they moved forward. The others might treat them as they chose;
he, at least, would neither say anything to them nor bow before them as
the ears did before Joseph in Holy Writ. Nevertheless, he looked out of
the corner of his eye at them as he took from the basket of the
round-checked kitchen maid, who had now found her way to him, one fresh
brown roll after another, and placed them beside plate after plate. How
well risen and how crusty they were! They fairly cracked under the
pressure of the thumb, yet wheat rolls had been baked specially for the
Nuremberg party. Was God's good gift too poor for the Honourables with
the gold chains?

Now, even fragile little Dr. Eberbach, and the students and Bacchantes
who had stood around him like disciples, intently listening to his words,
bowed respectfully. The ungodly, insolent fellows who surrounded the
Dominican Jacobus, the vender of indulgences, had turned from him, while
he exhorted them, as if he were an importunate beggar. What did the
merchants, artisans, and musicians know about the godless Greek and Latin
writings which brought the names of Pirckheimer and Peutinger before the
people, yet how reverently many of these folk now bowed before them. Only
the soldiers with swords at their sides held their heads erect. They
proved that they were right in calling themselves "pious lansquenets."
The broad-shouldered knight, with the plumed hat and suit of mail, who
walked beside them, was Sir Hans von Obernitz, the Schultheiss of
Nuremberg. He was