ly made ourselves ill. We went at first
to the chapter school of the Holy Cross, but when we found that there
were some Swiss in the parsonage house at St. Elizabeth, we went there.
The city of Breslau has seven parishes, and each its separate school:
no scholar ventured to sing in another parish; if he did the cry of 'Ad
idem, ad idem,' was raised, and the Schuetzen collected together and
fought. It is said that there were at one time some thousands of
Bacchanten and Schuetzen who all lived on alms; it is also said that
some of them who were twenty or thirty years old, or even more, had
their Schuetzen who supported them. I have often of an evening carried
home to the school where they lived, for my Bacchanten, five or six
meals. People gave to me willingly because I was little, and a Swiss,
for they loved the Swiss.

"There I remained for some time, as I was very ill that winter, and
they were obliged to take me to the hospital; the scholars had their
own especial hospital and doctors, and sixteen hellers a week are given
at the town hall for the use of the sick, which provided for us well.
We were well nursed and had good beds, but there were lice therein,
beyond belief, as big as hempseed, so that I and others would much
rather have lain on the floor than in the beds. It is hardly possible
to believe how the scholars and Bacchanten were covered with lice. I
have ofttimes, especially in the summer, gone to wash my shirt in the
water of the Oder, and hung it on a bush to dry; and in the mean time
cleared my coat of the lice, buried the heap, and placed a cross over
the spot. In the winter the Schuetzen used to lie on the hearth in the
school; but the Bacchanten lived in small rooms, of which there were
some hundreds at St. Elizabeth; but during the summer, when it was hot,
we lay in the churchyard, like pigs in straw, on grass which we
collected from before the houses of the principal streets, where it was
spread on Sundays; but when it rained we ran into the school, and if
there was a storm we chanted almost all night the responsoria and other
things with the succentor. We often went in summer after supper to the
beerhouses to beg for beer: they gave us the strong Polish peasant
beer, which, before I was aware of it, made me so drunk that even when
within a stone's throw from the school I could not find my way to it.
In short, we got sufficient nourishment, but little study.

"In the school of St. Elizabeth, nine ba