for these city demigods; for the landlord of The Pike intended to look after their table himself.  Tomfoolery!  There was more than enough for him to do that day over yonder in the room occupied by the lansquenets and the city soldiers, where he usually directed affairs in person.  It roused Dietel’s ire.  The cooking of The Blue Pike, which the landlady superintended, could vie with any in the Frank country, on the Rhine, or in Swabia, yet, forsooth, it wasn’t good enough for the Nuremberg guests.  The Council cook, a fat, pompous fellow, accompanied them, and had already begun to bustle about the hearth beside the hostess.  They really would have required no service at all, for they brought their own attendants.  It certainly was not Dietel’s usual custom to wish any one evil, but if Gotz Berlichinger, who had recently attacked a party of Leipsic merchants at Forchheim, or Hans von Geisslingen had fallen upon them and subdued their arrogance, it would not have spoiled Dietel’s appetite.

At last they moved forward.  The others might treat them as they chose; he, at least, would neither say anything to them nor bow before them as the ears did before Joseph in Holy Writ.  Nevertheless, he looked out of the corner of his eye at them as he took from the basket of the round-checked kitchen maid, who had now found her way to him, one fresh brown roll after another, and placed them beside plate after plate.  How well risen and how crusty they were!  They fairly cracked under the pressure of the thumb, yet wheat rolls had been baked specially for the Nuremberg party.  Was God’s good gift too poor for the Honourables with the gold chains?

Now, even fragile little Dr. Eberbach, and the students and Bacchantes who had stood around him like disciples, intently listening to his words, bowed respectfully.  The ungodly, insolent fellows who surrounded the Dominican Jacobus, the vender of indulgences, had turned from him, while he exhorted them, as if he were an importunate beggar.  What did the merchants, artisans, and musicians know about the godless Greek and Latin writings which brought the names of Pirckheimer and Peutinger before the people, yet how reverently many of these folk now bowed before them.  Only the soldiers with swords at their sides held their heads erect.  They proved that they were right in calling themselves “pious lansquenets.”  The broad-shouldered knight, with the plumed hat and suit of mail, who walked beside them, was Sir Hans von Obernitz, the Schultheiss of Nuremberg.  He was said to be a descendant of the ancient Brandenstein race, and yet—­was the world topsy-turvy?—­he, too, was listening to every word uttered by Wilibald Pirckheimer and Dr. Peutinger as if it were a revelation.  The gray-haired leech and antiquary, Hartmann Schedel, whom Herr Wilibald,—­spite of the gout which sometimes forced a slight grimace to distort his smooth-shaven, clever, almost over-plump face,—­led by the arm like a careful son, resembled, with his long, silver locks, a patriarch or an apostle.