and maxims concerning love, for the most part from the Greek and Latin
poets, and yet all his attempts to repeat them before Ann came to
nothing, inasmuch as she was again and again taken up with Herdegen
and with me, after she had once shaken hands with him and given him her
greetings.

At supper he was as dumb as the carp which were served, and it befell
that for the first time Herdegen took his seat between him and his
heart's beloved; and verily I was grieved for him when, after supper, he
withdrew downcast to his own chamber. The rest of us went forth to Saint
Sebald's church, where that night there would be midnight matins, as
there was every year, and a mass called the Christ mass. Cousin Maud and
Kunz were with us, as in the old happy days when we were children and
when we never missed; and in the streets as we went, we met all manner
of folks singing gladly:

Puer natus in Bethlehem,
Sing, rejoice, Jerusalem!

or the carol:

Congaudeat turba fadelium!
Natus est rex, Salvator omnium
In Bethlehem.

and we joined in; and at last all went together to see Ann to her home.

Next evening there were more costly gifts, but albeit Puer natus was
still to be heard in the streets, we no longer were moved to join in.

CHAPTER XII.

Every Christmas all my grand-uncle's kith and kin, or so many of them
as were on good terms with him, assembled in the great house of the
Im Hoffs. Everything in that dwelling spoke of ease and wealth, and no
banqueting-hall could be more brightly lighted or more richly decked
than that where the old man welcomed us on the threshold; and yet, how
well soever the hearth was piled or the stove heated, a chill breath
seemed to blow there.

While great and small were rejoicing over the grand old knight's bounty
he himself would ever stand apart, and his calm, hueless countenance
expressed no change. Meseemed he cared but little for the pleasure he
gave us all; yet was he not idle in the matter, nor left it to others;
for there was no single gift which he had not himself chosen as
befitting him to whom it should be given.

The trade of his great house was for the most part with Venice, and it
would have been easy to fancy oneself in some fine palazzo on the grand
canal as one marked the carpets, the mirrors, the brocade, and the
vessels in his house; and not a few of his tokens had likewise been
brought from thence.

Before this l