greeting came as a fragrant love-posy, and it helped us to think of
Herdegen's long pilgrimage as he himself did--as of a ride forth to the
Forest. From this letter we were likewise aware that he had never known
what peril he had escaped; for ere long I learned from Kunz that paid
assassins had fallen on him the very next evening after Herdegen's
departing, in the crooked street called of Saint Chrysostom, at the back
part of the German Merchants' House; yea, and they would easily have
overpowered him but that certain great strong Tyrolese bale-packers of
the Fondaco came to his succor or ever it was too late. And it was right
certain that these murderers were in Giustiniani's pay, and in the dusk
had taken Kunz for his brother, who was some what like him. The younger
had come off unharmed by the special mercy of the Saints, but it might
well have befallen that, as of old in his schooldays, he should have
borne the penalty for Herdegen's misdoings. And whereas I mind me here
of the many ways in which my eldest brother prospered and got the best of
it over the younger, and of other like cases, meseems it is the lot of
certain few to suffer others, not their betters, to stand in their sun,
and eat the fruit that has ripened on their trees.

Howbeit, Herdegen had by good hap escaped a sharp fray; and when Ann and
I, kneeling side by side in Saint Laurence's church, had offered up a
thanksgiving from the bottom of our hearts, meseemed we were as some
Captain who sings Te Deum after a victory.

Yet, as ofttimes in the month of May, when for a while the sun bath shone
with summer heat and glory, there comes a gloomy time with dark days and
sharp frost at nights, so did we deem the long space which followed after
that glad and pious church-going. Days grew to weeks and weeks to months
and we had no tidings, no word from our pilgrims, for good or for evil.