charm in mine; as to whether I
have always supplemented her correctly, that must remain an open
question.

I have endeavored to throw myself into the mind and spirit of my Margery
and repeat her tale with occasional amplification, in a familiar style,
yet with such a choice of words as seems suitable to the date of her
narrative. Thus I have perpetuated all that she strove to record for her
descendants out of her warm heart and eager brain; though often in mere
outline and broken sentences, still, in the language of her time and of
her native province.

MARGERY

CHAPTER I.

I, MARGERY SCHOPPER, was born in the year of our Lord 1404, on the
Tuesday after Palm Sunday. My uncle Christan Pfinzing of the Burg, a
widower whose wife had been a Schopper, held me at the font. My father,
God have his soul, was Franz Schopper, known as Franz the Singer. He died
in the night of the Monday after Laetare Sunday in 1404, and his wife my
mother, God rest her, whose name was Christine, was born a Behaim; she
had brought him my two brothers Herdegen and Kunz, and she died on the
eve of Saint Catharine's day 1404; so that I lost my mother while I was
but a babe, and God dealt hardly with me also in taking my father to
Himself in His mercy, before I ever saw the light.

Instead of a loving father, such as other children have, I had only a
grave in the churchyard, and the good report of him given by such as had
known him; and by their account he must have been a right merry and
lovable soul, and a good man of business both in his own affairs and in
those pertaining to the city. He was called "the Singer" because, even
when he was a member of the town-council, he could sing sweetly and
worthily to the lute. This art he learned in Lombardy, where he had been
living at Padua to study the law there; and they say that among those
outlandish folk his music brought him a rich reward in the love of the
Italian ladies and damsels. He was a well-favored man, of goodly stature
and pleasing to look upon, as my brother Herdegen his oldest son bears
witness, since it is commonly said that he is the living image of his
blessed father; and I, who am now an old woman, may freely confess that I
have seldom seen a man whose blue eyes shone more brightly beneath his
brow, or whose golden hair curled thicker over his neck and shoulders
than my brother's in the high day of his happy youth.

He was born at Eastertide, and the Almighty blessed