Then he shut his eyes for a good while, and presently asked for some of the fine Bacharach wine which Cousin Maud had sent him; but his voice could scarce be heard.  Ann reached him the glass, and at a sign from him she tasted of it; then he drank it with much comfort while Dame Giovanna held him sitting.  The old, sweet smile was on his lips, and as he yet held the stem of the glass with a shaking hand, and suffered that I should help him, he cried in a clear voice:  “Once more, Prosit, Elsie!  You have waited long enough up there for your old man.  And Prosit, likewise, to my dear old home, the fair city of Nuremberg.”  Then he took breath and added according to his wont:  “Prosit, Adam!  Thanks, Heyden!” And emptied the cup which I tilted up for him, to the very bottom.  Then, when he fell back and gazed before him in silence, I found speech, and noted, albeit it struck me in truth as somewhat strange, that he bore our good town in mind then, in drinking his old pledge.  Hereupon he nodded kindly and added, with an enquiring glance at the churchwarden:  “It is rightly the duty of every true Christian man to pray for all mankind!  Well, well; but they are so many, so infinitely many; and I, like every other man, have my own little world, inside the great world, as it were, and that is my dear old, staunch town of Nuremberg.  Never have I been beyond its precincts, and it contains all on earth that is dear and precious to me.  To me the citizens of Nuremberg are all mankind, and our city and so much as the eye can see from this tower all my world, small though it may be.  I could ever find some good matter for thought in Nuremberg, something noble and well-compact, a fine whole.  I have never sought the boundaries of the other, greater world.”

Yet, that his world was in truth wider than he weened, was plain to us from the prayer he murmured wherein we could hear my brothers’ names, albeit land and seas parted them from him.  And after that, for a space all were silent, and he lay gazing at the bone crucifix on the wall; and at last he besought Dame Giovanna to lift him somewhat higher, and he drank again a little more, and said right softly as he cast a loving glance upon us each in turn:  “I have looked into my own heart and gazed on Him on the Cross!  That is our ensample!  And I depart joyfully—­and if you would know what maketh death so easy to me; it is that I have needed but little, and kept little for myself; and whereas I was wont to give away what other men save, I came to know of a certainty that all the good we do to others is the best we can do for ourselves.  It is that, it is that!”

And he stretched forth his hand, and when we had all kissed it, he cried out:  “My God, I now can say I thank Thee!  What to-morrow may bring, Thou alone canst know!  Margery, Ann, my poor children!  May the bright day of meeting dawn for you!  May Heaven in mercy protect the youths beyond seas!  Here, close at hand is Mistress Kreutzer with her orphan children, you know them—­you and Master Peter—­they are in sore need of help—­and the good we do to others.  But come close to me, come all of you—­and the little ones likewise.”