The heated room, filled with buzzing flies, was crowded with travellers.  The wife and daughter of a feather-curler, who were on their way with the husband and father to the Reichstag, where many an aristocratic gentleman would need plumes for his own head and his wife’s, had just dropped the comb with which they were arranging each other’s hair.  The shoemaker and his dame from Nuremberg paused in the sensible lecture they were alternately addressing to their apprentices.  The Frankfort messenger put down the needle with which he was mending the badgerskin in his knapsack.  The travelling musicians who, to save a few pennies, had begun to eat bread, cheese, and radishes, instead of the warm meals provided for the others, let their knives drop and set down the wine-jugs.  The traders, who were hotly arguing over Italian politics and the future war with Turkey, were silent.  The four monks, who had leaned their heads against the cornice of the wide, closed fireplace and, in spite of the flies which buzzed around them, had fallen asleep, awoke.  The vender of indulgences in the black cowl interrupted the impressive speech which he was delivering to the people who surrounded his coffer.  This group also —­soldiers, travelling artisans, peasants, and tradesfolk with their wives, who, like most of those present, were waiting for the vessel which was to sail down the Main early the next morning—­gazed toward the door.  Only the students and Bacchantes,—­[Travelling scholars]—­who were fairly hanging on the lips of a short, slender scholar, with keen, intellectual features, noticed neither the draught of air caused by the entrance of the distinguished arrivals and their followers, nor the general stir aroused by their appearance, until Dr. Eberbach, the insignificant, vivacious speaker, recognised in one of the group the famous Nuremberg humanist, Wilibald Pirckheimer.

CHAPTER II.

At first Dietel, the old waiter, whose bullet-shaped head was covered with thick gray hair, also failed to notice them.  Without heeding their entrance, he continued,—­aided by two assistants who were scarcely beyond boyhood,—­to set the large and small pine tables which he had placed wherever he could find room.

The patched tablecloths which he spread over the tops were coarse and much worn; the dishes carried after him by the two assistants, whose knees bent under the burden, were made of tin, and marred by many a dent.  He swung his stout body to and fro with jerks like a grasshopper, and in doing so his shirt rose above his belt, but the white napkin under his arm did not move a finger’s width.  In small things, as well as great ones, Dietel was very methodical.  So he continued his occupation undisturbed till an inexperienced merchant’s clerk from Ulm, who wanted to ride farther speedily, accosted him and asked for some special dish.  Dietel drew his belt farther down and promptly snubbed the young man with the angry retort; “Everybody must wait for his meal.  We make no exceptions here.”