urity for Duke Heinrich.
Schweinichen was co-heir to a deeply involved property, and up to an
advanced age was engaged in endless quarrels with the creditors, and
also with his relations, who had been surety for him, and for whom he
had been surety. This was indeed, towards the end of the sixteenth
century, the usual lot of landed proprietors. But besides this, he for
many years joined in all the mad pranks of his princely master, which
were for the most part rather of a lax nature, so he came in for no
unimportant share of these frivolous proceedings. The moral cultivation
of those times was undoubtedly on the whole much lower than that of
ours, and he must only be judged by the standard of his own time. He
was no man of the sword, and his valour was tempered by a strong degree
of caution. Always in good humour, and at the same time crafty,
furnished with great powers of persuasion, he contrived to glide like
an eel through the most difficult situations with the open bearing of
an honest man, and the most good humoured countenance in the world.
Even when most dissolute he still clung to the hope of redeeming the
future, and whilst living as a wild courtier, he considered himself as
an honourable country nobleman, who had to preserve the good opinion of
his fellows. He had always a small degree of conscientiousness in
domestic matters; his was not however a burdensome or strict
conscience, and demanded only occasional obedience. He valued himself
not a little, and gradually began to take less pleasure in his master's
vagaries. The endless changes, the quarrels with Jews and Christians,
and the anxieties about the daily wine, made this life at last too
irregular for him; he had always kept a diary of his own life, and
seldom forgot to note down that on the previous evening he had been
tipsy: at the end of each year's diary, which sometimes contained
nothing but a succession of convivial parties and discreditable money
transactions, he would commend his soul to God, and after that, note
the price of corn in the last year. All that he had mortgaged for his
lord we find marked down in his diary with a statement, as precise as
superfluous, of the real worth in silver. After he had thus pretty
nearly mortgaged everything, he experienced the heartfelt grief of
seeing his Duke in the Imperial prison, there he parted with him, not
without grief, as one parts from the friend of one's youth; but his
German understanding told him th