moats would have parted them; nay, that in Italy the Nuremberger would
even call a man of Cologne his countryman.

For my part, I could in no wise conceive how those two should ever more
speak a kind word to each other, and this meeting in truth pleased me
ill. Howbeit, his next letter gave us better cheer. He had then seen
Kunz, meeting him right joyfully, and was lodged in the Fondaco, the
German Merchants' Hall, where likewise Kunz had his own chamber.

Herdegen's next letter from Venice brought us the ill tidings that the
plague had broken out, and that he could find no fellowship to travel
with him, by reason that, so long as the sickness raged in Venice, her
vessels would not be suffered to cast anchor in any seaport of the
Levant. And a great fear came over me, for our dear father had fallen a
prey to that evil.

In his third or fourth letter our pilgrim told us, with somewhat of
scorn, that the Marchesa Zorzi, who had in fact removed thither from
Padua, and had made friends with Ursula in the house of Filippo Polani,
had bidden him to wait on her, by one of her pages; yet might he be
proud--he said--of the high-handed and steadfast refusal he had returned,
once for all. In truth I was moved to deeper fears by what both my
brothers wrote of the black barges, loaded to the gunwale with naked
corpses, which stole along the canals in the silent night, to cast forth
their dreadful freight in the grave yards on the shore, or into the open
sea. The plague was raging nigh to the Fondaco, and my two brothers were
living in the midst of the dead; nay, and Ann knew that Ursula would not
depart from her lover, although the Palazzo Polani, where she had found
lodging, lay hard by the Fondaco.