courage and skill of the leader were all in vain; the vast multitude of
which he was captain was made up of over many parts, all unlike, and each
with its own chief; and the fury of the heretics scattered them abroad.
Likewise among our peaceful citizens there was no small complaining,
and with good cause, that a King should rule the Empire whose Realm of
Hungary, with the perils that beset it from the Ottoman Turks, the
Bohemians, and other foes, so filled his thoughts that he had neither
time, nor mind, nor money to bestow due care on his German States. His
treasury was ever empty; and what sums had the luckless war with Venice
alone swallowed up! He had not even found the money needful to go to
Rome to be crowned Emperor. He had failed to bring the contentious
Princes of the Empire under one hat, so to speak; and whereas his father,
Charles IV., had been called the Arch-stepfather of the German Empire,
Sigismund, albeit a large-hearted, shrewd, and unresting soul, deserved a
scarce better name, inasmuch as that he, like the former sovereign, when
he fell heir to his Bohemian fatherland, knew not how to deal even with
that as a true father should.

Not a week passed after Herdegen's departing but a letter by his own hand
came to Ann, and all full of faithful love. I, likewise, had, not so
long since, had such letters from another, and so it fell that these,
which brought great joy to Ann, did but make my sore heart ache the more.
And when I would rise from table silent and with drooping head, the
Magister would full often beg leave to follow me to my chamber, and
comfort me after his own guise. In all good faith would he lay books
before my eyes, and strive to beguile me to take pleasure in them as the
best remedy against heaviness of soul. The lives of the mighty heathen,
as his Plutarch painted them, would, he said, raise even a weak soul to
their greatness and the Consolatio Philosophiae of Boetius would of a
surety refresh my stricken heart. Howbeit, one single well-spent hour in