At supper he was as dumb as the carp which were served, and it befell that for the first time Herdegen took his seat between him and his heart’s beloved; and verily I was grieved for him when, after supper, he withdrew downcast to his own chamber.  The rest of us went forth to Saint Sebald’s church, where that night there would be midnight matins, as there was every year, and a mass called the Christ mass.  Cousin Maud and Kunz were with us, as in the old happy days when we were children and when we never missed; and in the streets as we went, we met all manner of folks singing gladly: 

                    Puer natus in Bethlehem,
                    Sing, rejoice, Jerusalem!

or the carol: 

                    Congaudeat turba fadelium! 
                    Natus est rex, Salvator omnium
                    In Bethlehem.

and we joined in; and at last all went together to see Ann to her home.

Next evening there were more costly gifts, but albeit Puer natus was still to be heard in the streets, we no longer were moved to join in.

CHAPTER XII.

Every Christmas all my grand-uncle’s kith and kin, or so many of them as were on good terms with him, assembled in the great house of the Im Hoffs.  Everything in that dwelling spoke of ease and wealth, and no banqueting-hall could be more brightly lighted or more richly decked than that where the old man welcomed us on the threshold; and yet, how well soever the hearth was piled or the stove heated, a chill breath seemed to blow there.

While great and small were rejoicing over the grand old knight’s bounty he himself would ever stand apart, and his calm, hueless countenance expressed no change.  Meseemed he cared but little for the pleasure he gave us all; yet was he not idle in the matter, nor left it to others; for there was no single gift which he had not himself chosen as befitting him to whom it should be given.

The trade of his great house was for the most part with Venice, and it would have been easy to fancy oneself in some fine palazzo on the grand canal as one marked the carpets, the mirrors, the brocade, and the vessels in his house; and not a few of his tokens had likewise been brought from thence.

Before this largesse in his own house he was wont to bestow another, and a very noble one, on the old men and women of the poor folks in the town; and when this was over he went with them to the church of Saint Aegidius, and washed the feet of about a score of them, which act of penitential humility he was wont to repeat in Passion week.

Then when he had welcomed his kin, each one to his house, he would say to such as thanked him, if it were a child, very soberly:  “Be a good child.”  But for elder folks he had no more than “It is well,” or an almost churlish:  “That is enough.”

This evening he had given me a gown of costly brocade of Cyprus; to Kunz everything that a Junker might need on his travels; and to Herdegen the same sword which he himself had in past time worn at court; the hilt was set with gems and ended in the lion rampant, couped, of the Im Hoffs.  Ursula Tetzel, like me, had had a gown-piece which was lying near by the sword.