This evening, as it fell, Aunt Jacoba was not with her guests, but unwillingly, inasmuch as we were to depart homewards next morning, and the gentlemen sat late over their farewell cups.  It had become Cousin Maud’s care to hinder Uncle Christian from drinking more freely than he ought; but this evening he had made the task a hard one; nay, when she steadfastly forbade him a third cup he got it by craft and in spite of her, nor could she persuade him to forego the dangerous joy.  When he had cried, as has been told, that “there was stuff” in my brother, it was by reason of his having perceived that Herdegen had already filled his cup for the fourteenth time, and when the youth had drunk it off the old man sang out in high glee: 

          “Der Eppela Gaila von Dramaus
          Reit’ allezeit zu vierzeht aus!”

[An old popular rhyme in Nuremberg.  “Eppela (Apollonius) Gaila of Dramaus—­or Drameysr—­could always go as far as fourteen cups.”  Apollonius von Gailingen was a brigand chief who brought much damage and vexation on the town.  Drameysel, in popular form Dramaus, was his stronghold near Muggendorf in Swiss Franconia.]

“Now, if the boy can drink three times the mystic seven, he will do what I could do at his age.”

And presently Herdegen did indeed drink his one and twenty cups, and when at last he paced the whole length of the great dining hall on one seam of the flooring the old man was greatly pleased, and rewarded him with the gift of a noble tankard which he himself had won of yore at a drinking bout.  All this made good sport for us, save only for Jost Tetzel, who was himself a right moderate man; indeed, in aftertimes, when at Venice I saw how that wealthy and noble gentlemen drank but sparingly of the juice of the grape, I marvelled wherefor we Germans are ever proud of a man who is able to drink deep, and apt to look askance at such as fear to see the bottom of the cup.  And if I had an answer ready, that likewise I owed to my uncle Christian; inasmuch as that very eve, when I would fain have warned Herdegen against the good liquor, my uncle put in his word and said it was every man’s duty to follow in the ways of Saint George the dragon-killer, and to quell and kill every fiend; be it what it might.  “Now in the wine cup, quoth he, there lurks a dragon named drunkenness, and it beseemeth German valor and strength not merely to vanquish it, but even to make it do good service:  The fiend of the grape, like the serpent killed by the saint, has two wide pinions, and the true German drinker must make use of them to soar up to the seventh heaven.”

And as concerns my Herdegen, I must confess that when he had well drunk his spirits were higher, his mind clearer, and his song more glad; and this is not so save in those dragon-slayers who have been blessed with a fine temper and a strong brain inherited from their parents.