He sang the last words to himself as it were, and vanished, seeing certain persons of the Court.

Now I took this well-meant warning as it was intended; and albeit Ann and I were heartsick with longing to see Herdegen and to release him from his hiding, we nevertheless took patience.  The legal guardians of our estate, having my uncle’s consent, took my Cousin Maud’s suretyship, and expressed themselves willing to pay the fine out of the moneys left by our parents, into the Imperial treasury.  And that which followed thereafter showed us how wise the Fool’s admonition had been.

The knight, Sir Apitz von Rochow, who had served as Junker Henning’s second in the fight, tarried yet in Nuremberg, and this rude, arrogant youth had devoted himself with such true loving-kindness to the care of his young cousin, at first in the priest’s house at Altenpero and afterwards in the Deutsch-haus in the town, that he had taken no rest, day nor night, until the Junker’s father came, and then he fell into a violent fever.  It was but of late that the leech had granted him to go out of doors, and his first walk was to our house to show me his sorrow for my grief, and to thank my cousin for many pleasant trifles which she had sent to him and the Junker during their sickness, to refresh them.  At the same time he broke forth in loud and unstinted wrath against Sir Franz von Welemisl, and gave us to wit that with his whole heart he grudged him the fair Ursula, whose favor he himself had so diligently sued for since the first days of the Diet.  From our house he went to the Tetzels’, and then he and the Bohemian forthwith came to high words and defiant glances.

Shortly after this, and a few hours only after my brother’s penalty had been paid into the Treasury, the two young gentlemen met in the nobles’ wine-room by the Frohnwage, and von Rochow, heated by wine and heeding neither moderation nor manners, began to taunt Ursula’s betrothed.  After putting it to him that he had left the task to Herdegen of picking up the glove, “which peradventure he had thought was of too heavy leather,” to which the other made seemly reply, he enquired, inasmuch as they were discoursing of marriage, whether the Church, which forbids the joining of those who are near of kin, hath not likewise the power to hinder a young and blooming maid from binding herself for life to a sickly husband.  Such discourse was ill-pleasing by reason of the Bohemian’s presence there:  and the Junker went yet further, till to some speech made by old Master Grolaud, he made answer by asking what then might be a priest’s duty, if the sick bridegroom failed to say “yes” at the altar by reason of his coughing?  And as he spoke he cast a challenging look at Welemisl.

The hot blood of the Bohemian flew to his brain; or ever any one could hinder him, his knife was buried to the hilt in the other’s shoulder.  All hastened to help the Brandenburger, and when presently some turned to seize the criminal he was no more to be seen.