It was one of the most crowded inns, being situated on the main ferry at
Miltenberg, where those journeying from Nuremberg, Augsburg, and other
South German cities, on their way to Frankfort and the Lower Rhine,
rested and exchanged the saddle for the ship. Just at the present time
many persons of high and low degree were on their way to Cologne, whither
the Emperor Maximilian, having been unable to come in April to Trier on
the Moselle, had summoned the Reichstag.

The opening would take place in a few days, and attracted not only
princes, counts, and knights, exalted leaders and more modest servants of
the Church, ambassadors from the cities, and other aristocrats, but also
honest tradesfolk, thriving money-lenders with the citizen's cloak and
the yellow cap of the Jew, vagrants and strollers of every description,
who hoped to practise their various feats to the best advantage, or to
fill their pockets by cheating and robbery.

This evening many had gathered in the spacious taproom of The Blue Pike.
Now those already present were to be joined by the late arrivals whom
Cyriax had seen ride up.

It was a stately band. Four aristocratic gentlemen at the head of the
troop were followed by an escort of twenty-five Nuremberg mercenaries, a
gay company whose crimson coats, with white slashes on the puffed
sleeves, presented a showy spectacle. Their helmets and armour glittered
in the bright light of the setting sun of the last day of July, as they
turned their horses in front of the wide gateway of The Blue Pike to ride
into Miltenberg and ask lodgings of the citizens.

The trampling of hoofs, the shouts of command, and the voices of the