Augsburg city clerk, who valued his Padua title
of doctor more than that of an imperial councillor. "It applies to all
departments. Don't allow yourself to regret your generosity, friend
Lienhard. 'Nothing becomes man better than the pleasure of giving,'
says Terentius.--[Terenz. Ad. 360]--Who is more liberal than the destiny
which adorns the apple tree that is to bear a hundred fruits, with ten
thousand blossoms to please our eyes ere it satisfies our appetite?"

"To you, if to any one, it gives daily proof of liberality in both
learning and the affairs of life," Herr Wilibald assented.

"If you will substitute 'God, our Lord,' for 'destiny,' I agree with
you," observed the Abbot of St. AEgidius in Nuremberg.

The portly old prelate nodded cordially to Dr. Peutinger as he spoke.
The warm, human love with which he devoted himself to the care of souls
in his great parish consumed the lion's share of his time and strength.
He spent only his leisure hours in the study of the ancient writers,
in whom he found pleasure, and rejoiced in the work of the humanists
without sharing their opinions.

"Yes, my dear Doctor," he continued in his deep voice, in a tone of the
most earnest conviction, "if envy were ever pardonable, he who presumed
to feel it toward you might most speedily hope to find forgiveness.
There is no physical or mental gift with which the Lord has not blessed
you, and to fill the measure to overflowing, he permitted you to win a
beautiful and virtuous wife of noble lineage."

"And allowed glorious daughters to grow up in your famous home," cried
little Dr. Eberbach, waving his wineglass enthusiastically. "Who has not
heard of Juliane Peutinger, the youngest of humanists, but no longer one
of the least eminent, who, when a child only four years old, addressed
the Emperor Maximilian in excellent Latin. But when, as in the
child Juliane, the wings of the intellect move so powerfully and so
prematurely, who would not think of the words of the superb Ovid: 'The
human mind gains victories more surely than lances and arrows.'"

But, ere he had finished the verse which, like many another Latin one,
he mingled with his German words, he noticed Lienhard Groland eagerly
motioning to him to stop. The latter knew only too well what had not
yet reached the ears of Eberbach in Vienna. The marvellous child, whose
precocious learning he had just extolled as a noble gift of Providence
to the father, was no longer among the