d gave orders to
the ostlers to hire me a carriage and pair, ordering a meal to be made
ready by ten o'clock. I attended Divine Service, the lunch was delayed.
I had no luck with the carriage and pair. I tried to hire a horse; my
own were useless. Everything failed. I realized what was up; they were
trying to make me stop there. I immediately ordered my horses to be
harnessed, and one bag to be loaded; the other bag I entrusted to the
innkeeper, and on my lame horse rode quickly to the Count of
Neuenahr's[77]--a five-hour journey. He was staying at Bedburg.

With the Count I stayed five days very pleasantly, in such peace and
quiet that while staying with him I completed a good part of the
revision--I had taken that part of the New Testament with me. Would that
you knew him, my dear Beatus! He is a young man but of rare good sense,
more than you would find in an old man; he speaks little, but as Homer
says of Menelaus, he speaks 'in clear tones,' and intelligently too; he
is learned without pretentiousness in more than one branch of study,
wholly sincere and a good friend. By now I was strong and lusty, and
well pleased with myself, and was hoping to be in a good state when I
visited the Bishop of Liege and to return hale and hearty to my friends
in Brabant. What dinner-parties, what felicitations, what discussions I
promised myself! But ah, deceptive human hopes! ah, the sudden and
unexpected vicissitudes of human affairs! From these high dreams of
happiness I was hurled to the depths of misfortune.

I had hired a carriage and pair for the next day. My companion, not
wanting to say goodbye before night, announced that he would see me in
the morning before my departure. That night a wild hurricane sprang up,
which had passed before the next morning. Nevertheless I rose after
midnight, to make some notes for the Count: when it was already seven
o'clock and the Count did not emerge, I asked for him to be waked. He
came, and in his customary shy and modest way asked me whether I meant
to leave in such bad weather, saying he was afraid for me. At that
point, my dear Beatus, some god or bad angel deprived me, not of the
half of my senses, as Hesiod says, but of the whole: for he had deprived
me of half my senses when I risked going to Cologne. I wish that either
my friend had warned me more sharply or that I had paid more attention
to his most affectionate remonstrances! I was seized by the power of
fate: what else am I to