e and incautious speech, which did not in the
least serve the council, Herr Muemer and Herr Notarius pushed him away;
but among the assembled wives there was great laughter and uproar.
'Yea! yea! we understand well enough now; they compare us to people who
are to be hanged. What fellows you are, one with the other! Oh you
faithless rogues! you usurious corn-dealers! you woollen thieves!
Thereupon the judge's wife called out: 'Silence! silence, you women!'
and said to Master Daniel: 'Hear, dear brother-in-law, you do not
understand the matter, and are also too few to compel us against our
conscience. Oh, how God will punish you, and my husband also, who so
openly acts against his conscience! Your dear deceased father, a
dignified Lutheran ecclesiastic, taught you both very differently. Now
you say you are good Roman Catholics. Your new faith is necessary for
your roguish tricks; when you are drunk you speak shamelessly enough of
the mother of God herself, and when you go to your bad women you speak
of yourselves as the brothers of the Virgin Mary. Oh, if your gains
were taken away from you, which you make from your offices and the
common property of the town, and consume again in eating and drinking;
if you were obliged to resume your joiners' trade again, and work
vigorously to keep yourselves warm, how soon you would give up your
Popery. May God punish you! Never shall you deprive us of our faith,
you yourselves will yet be hanged on that account.'

"The burgomaster's wife said: 'If you had nothing else to say to us,
the priest might have done that from the pulpit, and it would not have
been necessary to confine us on that account. It is not thus I could be
compelled to go to church. Under our former pastors and preachers it
was a great pleasure to me to go to church, for I received there
comfort from the word of God; now I am only scandalized and troubled
when I go there. So that it cries out to God in heaven. As concerns the
Easter offerings, every one is free; he who has to give may do so.'
Hereupon the other women screamed out loudly: 'Yea, we will give to the
priest, the devil, as his due.' The honourable envoys were terrified at
such discourse, and begged to be allowed to withdraw, and said not a
word further, but departed.

"Now when the honourable envoys returned to the King's judge, the
priest and the other gentlemen had already gone away; they made their
report, and also went home. The women were now release