souls, had attached a rich prebendary endowment.

His Reverence the prebendary Fleischmann, having attended the Council at
Costnitz, whither he was sent by the town elders with divers errands to
the Emperor Sigismund, who was engaged in a disputation with John Huss
the Bohemian schismatic, brought to my cousin's knowledge a governor
whose name was Peter Pihringer, a native of Nuremberg. He it was who
brought the Greek tongue, which was not yet taught in the Latin schools
of our city, not in our house alone, but likewise into others; he was not
indeed at all like the high-souled men and heroes of whom his Plutarch
wrote; nay, he was a right pitiable little man, who had learnt nothing of
life, though all the more out of books. He had journeyed long in Italy,
from one great humanistic doctor to another, and while he had sat at
their feet, feeding his soul with learning, his money had melted away in
his hands--all that he had inherited from his father, a worthy tavern-
keeper and master baker. Much of his substance he had lent to false
friends never to see it more, and it would scarce be believed how many
times knavish rogues had beguiled this learned man of his goods. At
length he came home to Nuremberg, a needy traveller, entering the city by
the same gate as that by which Huss had that same day departed, having
tarried in Nuremberg on his way to Costnitz and won over divers of our
learned scholars to his doctrine. Now, after Magister Peter had written
a very learned homily against the said Hans Huss, full of much Greek--
of which, indeed, it was reported that it had brought a smile to the
dauntless Bohemian's lips in the midst of his sorrow--he found a patron
in Doctor Fleischmann, who was well pleased with this tractate, and he
thenceforth made a living by teaching divers matters. But he sped but
ill, dwelling alone, inasmuch as he would forget to eat and drink and
mislay or lose his hardly won wage. Once the town watch had to see him
home because, instead of a book, he was carrying a ham which a gossip had