r him:

"That fellow is privily drinking up all my old Cyprus wine and Malvoisie.
And the other priests, the Plebian here--do you know their worldly and
base souls? They take up no cross, neither mortify the flesh by holy
fasting, but cherish and feed it as the lost heathen do. Are they holy
men following in the footsteps of the Crucified Lord? All that brings
them to me is a care for my oblations and gifts. I know them, I know them
all, the whole lot of them here in Nuremberg. As the city is, so are the
pastors thereof! Which of them all mortifies himself? Is there any high
court held here? To win the blessing of a truly lordly prelate, a man
must journey to Bamberg or to Wurzburg. Of what avail with the Blessed
Virgin and the Saints are such as these ruddy friars? Fleischmann,
Hellfeld, nay the Dominican prior himself--what are they? Why, at the
Diet they walked after the Bishop of Chiemsee and Eichstadt. In the
matters of the city--its rights, alliances, and dealings--they had indeed
a hand; there is nought so dear to them--in especial to Fleischmann--as
politics, and they are overjoyed if they may but be sent on some embassy.
Aye, and they have done me some service, as a merchant trader, whensoever
I have desired the safe conduct of princes and knights; but as to
charging them with the safe conduct of my soul, the weal or woe of my
immortal spirit!--No, no, never! Aye, Margery, for I have been a great
sinner. Greater power and more mighty mediation are needed to save and
deliver me, and behold, my Margery, meseems--hear me Margery--meseems a
special ruling of Heaven hath sent. . . . When is it that his Eminence
Cardinal Bernhardi will return from England?"

Hereupon I saw plainly what was in the wind. I answered him that his
Eminence purposed to return hither in three or four months' time; he
sighed deeply: "Not for so long--three months, do you say?"

"Or longer," quoth I, hastily; but he, forgetting the Friar, cried out as
though he knew better than I "No, no, in three months. So you said."

Then he spoke low again, and went on in a confident tone: "So long as
that I can hold out, by the help of the Saints, if I. . . . Yea, for I
have enough left to make some great endowment. My possessions, Margery,
the estate which is mine own--No man can guess what a well-governed
trading-house may earn in half a century.--Yes, I tell you, Margery, I
can hold out and wait. Two, or at most three months; they will soon slip
aw