chair stood between me and my aunt; this was left for Master Ulsenius,
the leech. This good man loved not to ride after dark, by reason of
highway robbers and plunderers, and some of us were somewhat ill at ease
at his coming so late. Notwithstanding this, the talk was not other than
cheerful; new guests had come to us from the town at noon, and they had
much to tell. Tidings had come that the Sultan of Egypt had fallen upon
the Island of Cyprus, and that the Mussulmans had beaten King Janus, who
ruled over it, and had carried him beyond seas in triumph to Old Cairo, a
prisoner and loaded with chains. Hereupon we were instructed by that
learned man, Master Eberhard Windecke, who was well-read in the history
of all the world--he had come to Nuremberg as a commissioner of finance
from his Majesty, and Uncle Tucher had brought him forth to the Forest--
he, I say, instructed us that the forefather of this King Janus of Cyprus
had seized upon the crown of Jerusalem at the time of the crusades,
during the lifetime of the mighty Sultan Saladin, by poison and perjury,
and had then bartered it with the English monarch Richard Coeur de lion,
in exchange for the Kingdom of Cyprus. That ancestor of King Janus was
by name Guy de Lusignan, and the sins of the fathers, so Master Windecke
set forth with flowers of eloquence, were ever visited on the children,
unto the third and fourth generation.

I, like most of the assembled company, had hearkened with due respect to
this discourse; yet had I not failed to note with what restless eyes my
aunt watched the two men when, after hardly staying their hunger and
thirst, they forthwith quitted the hall to tend the sick man; she truly
--as I would likewise--would rather have heard some present tidings than
this record of sins of the Lusignans dead and gone. Presently the two
men came back to their seats, and when Master Windecke, who, in speaking,
had forgotten to eat, fell to with double good will, Uncle Conrad gravely
bid Kubbeling to out with what he had to say; and yet the man, who was