“To you, if to any one, it gives daily proof of liberality in both learning and the affairs of life,” Herr Wilibald assented.

“If you will substitute ‘God, our Lord,’ for ‘destiny,’ I agree with you,” observed the Abbot of St. AEgidius in Nuremberg.

The portly old prelate nodded cordially to Dr. Peutinger as he spoke.  The warm, human love with which he devoted himself to the care of souls in his great parish consumed the lion’s share of his time and strength.  He spent only his leisure hours in the study of the ancient writers, in whom he found pleasure, and rejoiced in the work of the humanists without sharing their opinions.

“Yes, my dear Doctor,” he continued in his deep voice, in a tone of the most earnest conviction, “if envy were ever pardonable, he who presumed to feel it toward you might most speedily hope to find forgiveness.  There is no physical or mental gift with which the Lord has not blessed you, and to fill the measure to overflowing, he permitted you to win a beautiful and virtuous wife of noble lineage.”

“And allowed glorious daughters to grow up in your famous home,” cried little Dr. Eberbach, waving his wineglass enthusiastically.  “Who has not heard of Juliane Peutinger, the youngest of humanists, but no longer one of the least eminent, who, when a child only four years old, addressed the Emperor Maximilian in excellent Latin.  But when, as in the child Juliane, the wings of the intellect move so powerfully and so prematurely, who would not think of the words of the superb Ovid:  ’The human mind gains victories more surely than lances and arrows.’”

But, ere he had finished the verse which, like many another Latin one, he mingled with his German words, he noticed Lienhard Groland eagerly motioning to him to stop.  The latter knew only too well what had not yet reached the ears of Eberbach in Vienna.  The marvellous child, whose precocious learning he had just extolled as a noble gift of Providence to the father, was no longer among the living.  Her bright eyes had closed ere she reached maidenhood.

Dr. Eberbach, in painful embarrassment, tried to apologize for his heedlessness, but the Augsburg city clerk, with a friendly gesture, endeavoured to soothe his young fellow-scholar.

“It brought the true nature of happiness very vividly before all our eyes,” he remarked with a faint sigh.  “In itself it is not lasting.  A second piece of good fortune is needed to maintain the first.  Mine was indeed great and beautiful enough.  But we will let the dead rest.  What more have you heard concerning the first books of the Annales of Tacitus, said to have been discovered in the Corvey monastery?  If the report should be verified——­”