, first in the Chamber of Taxes, and then in the Chancery,
a respectable post of much trust. His father was, as Ursula Tetzel had
said in the school, a luteplayer; but he had long been held the head
and chief of teachers of the noble art of music, and was so greatly
respected by the clergy and laity that he was made master and leader of
the church choir, and even in the houses of the city nobles his
teaching of the lute and of singing was deemed the best. He was a right
well-disposed and cheerful old man, of a rare good heart and temper, and
of wondrous good devices. When the worshipful town council bid his
son Veit Spiesz come back to Nuremberg, the old man must need fit up a
proper house for him, since he himself was content with a small chamber,
and the scribe was by this time married to the fair Giovanna, the
daughter of one of the Sensali or brokers of the German Fondaco, and
must have a home and hearth of his own.

[Sensali--Agents who conducted all matters of business between the
German and Venetian merchants. Not even the smallest affair was
settled without their intervention, on account of the duties
demanded by the Republic. The Fondaco was the name of the great
exchange established by the Republic itself for the German trade.]

The musician, who had as a student dwelt in Venice, hit on the fancy
that he would give his daughter-in-law a home in Nuremberg like her
father's house, which stood on one of the canals in Venice; so he found
a house with windows looking to the river, and which he therefore deemed
fit to ease her homesickness. And verily the Venetian lady was pleased
with the placing of her house, and yet more with the old man's loving
care for her; although the house was over tall, and so narrow that there
were but two windows on each floor. Thus there was no manner of going
to and fro in the Spiesz's house, but only up and down. Notwithstanding,
the Venetian lady loved it, and I have heard her say that there was no
spot so sweet in all Nuremberg as the window seat on the second story of
her house. There stood her spinning-wheel and sewing-box; and a bright
Venice mirror, which, in jest, she would call "Dame Inquisitive," showed
her all that passed on the river and the Fleisch-brucke, for her house
was not far from those which stood facing the Franciscan Friars. There
she ruled in peace and good order, in love and all sweetness, and
her children throve even as the flowers did under her