CHAPTER IV.

Many of the fairest memories of my childhood are linked with the house
where Ann's parents dwelt. It was indeed but a simple home and not to be
named with ours--the Schopperhof--for greatness or for riches; but it was
a snug nest, and in divers ways so unlike ever another that it was full
of pleasures for a child.

Master Spiesz, Ann's father, had been bidden from Venice, where he had
been in the service of the Mendel's merchant house, to become head clerk
in Nuremberg, first in the Chamber of Taxes, and then in the Chancery,
a respectable post of much trust. His father was, as Ursula Tetzel had
said in the school, a luteplayer; but he had long been held the head and
chief of teachers of the noble art of music, and was so greatly respected
by the clergy and laity that he was made master and leader of the church
choir, and even in the houses of the city nobles his teaching of the lute
and of singing was deemed the best. He was a right well-disposed and
cheerful old man, of a rare good heart and temper, and of wondrous good
devices. When the worshipful town council bid his son Veit Spiesz come
back to Nuremberg, the old man must need fit up a proper house for him,
since he himself was content with a small chamber, and the scribe was by
this time married to the fair Giovanna, the daughter of one of the
Sensali or brokers of the German Fondaco, and must have a home and hearth
of his own.

[Sensali--Agents who conducted all matters of business between the
German and Venetian merchants. Not even the smallest affair was
settled without their intervention, on account of the duties
demanded by the Republic. The Fondaco was the name of the great