storm and siege. Or ever the Diet had met, many hands had already been
at work on these buildings; and in these days every man soul in
Nuremberg, from the boys even to the grey-haired men, wielded the spade
or the trowel. Every serving-man in every household, whether artisan or
patrician--and ours with the rest--was bound to toil at digging, and our
fine young masters found themselves compelled to work in sun or rain, or
to order the others; and it hurt them no more than it did the Magister,
whose feebleness and clumsiness did the works less benefit than the labor
did to his frail body.

Wheresoever three men might be seen in talk, for sure it was of state-
matters, and mostly of the Hussites. At first it would be of the King's
message of peace; of the resistance made by the Elector Palatine, Ludwig,
in the matter of receiving the ecclesiastical Elector of Mainz as Vicar-
general of the Empire; of the same reverend Elector's loss of dignity at
Boppard, and of the delay and mischief that must follow. Then it was
noised abroad that the Margrave Frederick of Meissen, who now held the
lands of the late departed Elector Albrecht of Saxony in fief from the
King, and whose country was a strong bulwark against the Bohemians, was
about to put an end to the abomination of heresy. Howbeit, neither he
nor Duke Albrecht of Austria did aught to any good end against the foe;
and matters went ill enough in all the Empire.

The Electors assembled at Bingen made great complaints of the King
tarrying so far away, and with reason; and when he presently bid them to
a Diet at Vienna they would not obey. The message of peace was laughed
to scorn; and how much blood was shed to feed the soil of the realm in
many and many a fight!

And what fate befell the army whereon so great hopes had been set? The