men (required by law to help put out the fires)
The heart must not be filled by another's image

IN THE FIRE OF THE FORGE

A ROMANCE OF OLD NUREMBERG

By Georg Ebers

Volume 4.

CHAPTER XV.

The city gates were already open. Peasants and peasant women bringing
vegetables and other farm produce to market thronged the streets, wains
loaded with grain or charcoal rumbled along, and herds of cattle and
swine, laden donkeys, the little carts of the farmers and bee keepers
conveying milk and honey to the city, passed over the dyke, which was
still softened by the rain of the preceding night.

The thunderstorm had cooled the air, but the rays of the morning sun were
already scorching. A few heavy little clouds were darkly relieved against
the blue sky, and a peasant, driving two sucking pigs before him, called
to another, who was carrying a goose under each arm, that the sun was
drawing water, and thundershowers seldom came singly.

Yet the city looked pleasant enough in the freshness of early June. The
maidservants who were opening the shutters glanced gaily out into the
streets, and arranged the flowers in front of the windows or bowed
reverently as a priest passed by on his way to mass. The barefooted
Capuchin, with his long beard, beckoned to the cook or the tradesman's
wife and, as she put something into his beggar's sack and he thanked her
kindly with some pious axiom, she felt as if she herself and all her
household had gained a right to the blessing of Heaven for that day, and
cheerily continued her work.

The brass counter in the low, broad bow window of the baker's house
glittered brightly, and the pale apprentice wiped the flour from his face
and gave his master's rosy-cheeked daughter fresh warm cakes to set on
the shining shelves. The barber's nimble apprentice hung the towel and
basin at the door, while his master, wearied by the wine-bibbing and talk
at the tavern or his labour at the fire, was still asleep. His active
wife had risen before him, strewed the shop with fresh sand, and renewed
the goldfinch's food.

The workshops and stores were adorned with birch branches, and the young
daughters of the burghers, in becoming caps, the maid servants and
apprentices, who were going to market with baskets on their arms, wore a
flower or something green on their breasts or in their caps.

The first notes of the bells, pealing solemnly, were summoning
worshippers to mass, the birds were s