tic doctor to another, and while he had
sat at their feet, feeding his soul with learning, his money had melted
away in his hands--all that he had inherited from his father, a worthy
tavern-keeper and master baker. Much of his substance he had lent to
false friends never to see it more, and it would scarce be believed how
many times knavish rogues had beguiled this learned man of his goods. At
length he came home to Nuremberg, a needy traveller, entering the city
by the same gate as that by which Huss had that same day departed,
having tarried in Nuremberg on his way to Costnitz and won over divers
of our learned scholars to his doctrine. Now, after Magister Peter had
written a very learned homily against the said Hans Huss, full of much
Greek--of which, indeed, it was reported that it had brought a smile
to the dauntless Bohemian's lips in the midst of his sorrow--he found a
patron in Doctor Fleischmann, who was well pleased with this tractate,
and he thenceforth made a living by teaching divers matters. But he sped
but ill, dwelling alone, inasmuch as he would forget to eat and drink
and mislay or lose his hardly won wage. Once the town watch had to
see him home because, instead of a book, he was carrying a ham which
a gossip had given him; and another day he was seen speeding down the
streets with his nightcap on, to the great mirth of the lads and lasses.

Notwithstanding he showed himself no whit unworthy of the high praise
wherewith his Reverence the Prebendary had commended him, inasmuch as he
was not only a right learned, but likewise a faithful and longsuffering
teacher. But his wisdom profited Herdegen and Ann and me rather than
Kunz, though it was for his sake that he had come to us; and as,
touching this strange man's person, my cousin told me later that when
she saw him for the first time she took such a horror of his wretched
looks that she was ready to bid him depart and desire the Reverend
doctor to send us another governor. But out of pity she would
nevertheless give him a trial, and considering that I should ere long
be fully grown, and that a young maid's heart is a strange thing, she
deemed that a younger teacher might lead it into peril.

At the time when Master Pihringer came to dwell with us, Herdegen was
already high enough to pass into the upper school, for he was first in
his 'ordo'; but our guardian, the old knight Hans Im Hoff, of whom I
shall have much to tell, held that he was yet too young