In a few moments we were united once more.  But no....

As I wrote the foregoing words with a trembling hand I vowed that I would set down nought but the truth and the whole truth.  And inasmuch as I have not shrunk from making mention of certain matters which many will deem of small honor to Herdegen, who was, by the favor of Heaven, so far more highly graced in all ways than I, who have never been other than middling gifted, it would ill-become me to shrink from relating matters whereof I myself have lived to repent.

There, by the ditch, was my dear only brother, weary and pale, a man marked for an early grave; and in front of me, within a few paces, the woman to whom my heart’s only and fervent love had been given even as a child.  She sat like a King’s daughter on a noble white horse with rich trappings.  A magnificent garment of fine cloth, richly broidered with Flanders velvet, flowed about her slender body.  The color thereof was white and sapphire-blue, and so likewise were the velvet cap and finely-rounded ostrich feather, which was fastened into it with a brooch of sparkling precious stones.  I had always deemed her fairest in sheeny white, and she knew it, while Herdegen had taken blue for his color; and behold she wore both, for love per chance of both brothers.  Never had I seen her fairer than at this minute and she had likewise waxed of a buxom comeliness, and how sweet were her red cheeks, and swan-white skin, and ebony-black hair, which flowed out from beneath her little hat in long plaits twined with white and sapphire-blue velvet ribbon.

Never did a maid seem more desirable to a man.  And her father on his great brown horse—­he was no more a craftsman!  In his councillor’s robes bordered with fur, with the golden chain round his neck, his well-favored, grave, and manly countenance, and the long, flowing hair down to his shoulders, meseemed he might have been the head of some ancient and noble family.  None in Nuremberg might compare with these two for manly dignity and womanly beauty, and was that sickly, bent horseman by the ditch worthy of them?  “No, no,” cried a voice in my heart.  “Yes, Yes!” cried another; and in the midst of this struggle I could but say to myself:  “He has an old and good right to her, and as soon as he has found breath he will claim it.”

But she?  What will she do; how will she demean her; is she aware of his presence?  Will she shrink from him as Dame Gossenprot did at Augsburg, and the inn-keeper’s smart wife at Ingolstadt, who of old was so over-eager to be at his service?  Would Ann, who had rejected many a lordly suitor, be as sweet as of yore to that breathless creature?  And if she were to follow the example which he long since set her, if she now cut the bond which he of old had snatched asunder, or if—­Merciful Virgin!—­ if his sickness should increase, and he himself should shrink from fettering her blooming young life to his own—­then, oh, then it might be my turn, then ....