and he owes everybody--the tailor, the lacemaker, the armourer, the
girdlemaker, and the goldsmith. If an apprentice reminds him of the
debt, let him beware of bruises."

"The Emperor Rudolph ought to issue an edict against such injustice!"
wrathfully exclaimed the other and taller youth, the handsome son of a
master of the craft from Weissenburg on the Sand, who expected soon to
take his father's place. "Up at Castle Graufels, which is saddled on our
little town, master and man would be going barefoot but for us; yet for
three years we haven't seen so much as a penny of his, though my father
says times have already improved, since the Hapsburg, as a just man----"

"Things have not been so bad here for a long while, the saints be
praised!" his companion broke in. "Siebenburg, or some of his wife's
rich kindred, will at last be compelled to settle matters. We have the
law and the Honourable Council to attend to that. Look up! Yonder
stately old house gave its daughter to the penniless knight. She is one
of our customers too; a handsome woman, and not one of the worst either.
But her mother, who was born a countess--if the shoe doesn't make a foot
small which Nature created big, there's such an outcry! True, the old
woman, her mother, is worse still; she scolds and screams. But look up
at the bow window. There she stands. I'm only a poor brewer's son, but
before I----"

"You don't say so!" the other interrupted. Have you seen the owl in the
cage in front of the guardhouse at the gate of the hospital? It is her
living image; and how her chin projects and moves up and down, as though
she were chewing leather!"

"And yet," said the other, as if insisting upon something difficult to