“You’ll think no better of me, if I do.”

“Then let us talk of something else.”

“No, Wilhelm.  I needn’t be ashamed, no one will take me for a coward.”

The musician laughed, exclaiming:  “You a coward!  How many Spaniards has your Brescian sword killed?”

“Wounded, wounded, sir, far oftener than killed,” replied the other.  “If the devil challenges me I shall ask:  Foils, sir, or Spanish swords?  But there’s one person I do fear, and that’s my best and at the same time my worst friend, a Netherlander, like yourself, the man who rides here beside you.  Yes, when rage seizes upon me, when my beard begins to tremble, my small share of sense flies away as fast as your doves when you let them go.  You don’t know me, Wilhelm.”

“Don’t I?  How often must one see you in command and visit you in the fencing-room?”

“Pooh, pooh—­there I’m as quiet as the water in yonder ditch—­but when anything goes against the grain, when—­how shall I explain it to you, without similes?”

“Go on.”

“For instance, when I am obliged to see a sycophant treated as if he were Sir Upright—­”

“So that vexes you greatly?”

“Vexes?  No!  Then I grow as savage as a tiger, and I ought not to be so, I ought not.  Roland, my foreman, probably likes—­”

“Meister, Meister, your beard is beginning to tremble already!”

“What did the Glippers think, when their aristocratic cloaks—­”

The landlord took yours and mine from the fire entirely on his own responsibility.”

“I don’t care!  The crook-legged ape did it to honor the Spanish sycophant.  It enraged me, it was intolerable.”

“You didn’t keep your wrath to yourself, and I was surprised to see how patiently the baron bore your insults.”

“That’s just it, that’s it!” cried the fencing-master, while his beard began to twitch violently.  “That’s what drove me out of the tavern, that’s why I took to my heels.  That—­that—­Roland, my fore man.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“Don’t you, don’t you?  How should you; but I’ll explain.  When you’re as old as I am, young man, you’ll experience it too.  There are few perfectly sound trees in the forest, few horses without a blemish, few swords without a stain, and scarcely a man who has passed his fortieth year that has not a worm in his breast.  Some gnaw slightly, others torture with sharp fangs, and mine—­mine.—­Do you want to cast a glance in here?”

The fencing-master struck his broad chest as he uttered these words and, without waiting for his companion’s reply, continued: 

“You know me and my life, Herr Wilhelm.  What do I do, what do I practise?  Only chivalrous work.

“My life is based upon the sword.  Do you know a better blade or surer hand than mine?  Do my soldiers obey me?  Have I spared my blood in fighting before the red walls and towers yonder?  No, by my fore man Roland, no, no, a thousand times no.”