This discourse had but ill-pleased Kubbeling, yet had he not taken it amiss, and had only said that she would be doing Kunz—­who had come to Egypt with him—­right good service, if she would give him more exact tidings of how his brother had met his end.

“Whereupon,” said the bird-seller, “she gave me a look the like of which not many could give; for inasmuch as the lady is, for certain, over eyes and ears in love with Junker Kunz. . . .”

But I stopped him, and said that in this he was of a certainty mistaken; Howbeit he laughed shortly and went on.  “Which of us saw her?  I or you?  But love or no love—­only listen till the end.  Mistress Ursula for sure knew not till then that Junker Kunz was in Alexandria, and so soon as she learnt it she began to question me.  She must know the day and hour when he had cast anchor there, wherefor he had chosen to lodge in the Genoa Fondaco, when I last had seen him, nay, and of what stuff and color his garments were made.  She went through them all, from the feather in his hat to his hose.  As for me, I must have seemed well nigh half witted, and I told her at last that I had no skill in such matters, but that I had ever seen him of an evening in a white mantle with a peaked hood.  Hereupon the blood all left her face, and with it all her beauty.  She clapped her hand to her forehead like one possessed or in a fit, as though caught in her own snare, and she would have fallen, if I had not held her upright.  And then, on a sudden, she stood firm on her feet, bid me depart right roughly, and pointed to the door; and I was ready and swift enough in departing.  When I was telling of all this to Uhlwurm, who had stayed without, and what I had heard concerning Junker Herdegen, he had nought to say but that accursed ‘Gone!’ And how that dazes me, old mole that I am, you yourselves have seen.  But the demeanor of Mistress Tetzel of Nuremberg, I have never had it out of my mind since, day or night, nor again, yesterday.”

He rubbed his damp brow, drank a draught, and took a deep breath; he was not wont to speak at such length.  But whereas we asked him many questions of these matters, he turned again to us maidens, and said “Grant me a few words apart from the matter you see, in time a man gets an eye for a falcon, and sees what its good points are, and if it ails aught.  He learns to know the breed by its feathers, and breastbone, and the color of its legs, and many another sign, and its temper by its eye and beak;—­and it is the same with knowing of men.  All this I learned not of myself, but from my father, God rest him; and like as you may know a falcon by the beak, so you may know a man or a woman by the mouth.  And as I mind me of Mistress Ursula’s face, as I saw it then, that is enough for me.  Aye, and I will give my best Iceland Gerfalcon for a lame crow if every word she spoke concerning the death of Junker Herdegen was not false knavery.  She is a goodly woman and of wondrous beauty; yet, as I