Thereupon he hastily greeted me, and went on to ask of me whether I duly minded that he had been a faithful and thankworthy guardian.  And when I answered yes he whispered to me, with a side-look at the friar, that of a surety my lord Cardinal must hold Ann full dear, if he would bid so famous a master to Nuremberg that he might possess her image.  Now inasmuch as I wist not yet to what end he sought to beguile me by these questions, I confirmed his words with all prudence; and then he glanced again at the monk, and whispered hastily in my ear, and so low that I scarce might hear him: 

“That fellow is privily drinking up all my old Cyprus wine and Malvoisie.  And the other priests, the Plebian here—­do you know their worldly and base souls?  They take up no cross, neither mortify the flesh by holy fasting, but cherish and feed it as the lost heathen do.  Are they holy men following in the footsteps of the Crucified Lord?  All that brings them to me is a care for my oblations and gifts.  I know them, I know them all, the whole lot of them here in Nuremberg.  As the city is, so are the pastors thereof!  Which of them all mortifies himself?  Is there any high court held here?  To win the blessing of a truly lordly prelate, a man must journey to Bamberg or to Wurzburg.  Of what avail with the Blessed Virgin and the Saints are such as these ruddy friars?  Fleischmann, Hellfeld, nay the Dominican prior himself—­what are they?  Why, at the Diet they walked after the Bishop of Chiemsee and Eichstadt.  In the matters of the city—­its rights, alliances, and dealings—­they had indeed a hand; there is nought so dear to them—­in especial to Fleischmann—­as politics, and they are overjoyed if they may but be sent on some embassy.  Aye, and they have done me some service, as a merchant trader, whensoever I have desired the safe conduct of princes and knights; but as to charging them with the safe conduct of my soul, the weal or woe of my immortal spirit!—­No, no, never!  Aye, Margery, for I have been a great sinner.  Greater power and more mighty mediation are needed to save and deliver me, and behold, my Margery, meseems—­hear me Margery—­meseems a special ruling of Heaven hath sent. . . .  When is it that his Eminence Cardinal Bernhardi will return from England?”

Hereupon I saw plainly what was in the wind.  I answered him that his Eminence purposed to return hither in three or four months’ time; he sighed deeply:  “Not for so long—­three months, do you say?”

“Or longer,” quoth I, hastily; but he, forgetting the Friar, cried out as though he knew better than I “No, no, in three months.  So you said.”

Then he spoke low again, and went on in a confident tone:  “So long as that I can hold out, by the help of the Saints, if I. . . .  Yea, for I have enough left to make some great endowment.  My possessions, Margery, the estate which is mine own—­No man can guess what a well-governed trading-house may earn in half a century.—­Yes, I tell you, Margery, I can hold out and wait.  Two, or at most three months; they will soon slip away.  The older we grow and the duller is life, the swifter do the days fly.”