Eppelein, would be glad to be no worse.

Albeit these tidings of Kunz were good to cheer us, our hopes of
ransoming Herdegen were indeed far away, or rather in the realm of
nevermore; even if my grand-uncle were possessed of so great a sum, it
was a question whether he would be willing to pay it; and as for us, we
could never have raised it at the cost of all our fortune. At that time
the Venice sequin and Nuremberg gulden were not far asunder in value, and
what the sum of twenty-four thousand gulden meant any man may imagine
when I say that, no more than twelve years sooner, the liberty of coining
for the whole city was granted by the Emperor Sigismund to Herdegen
Valzner for four thousand Rhenish gulden; and that Master Ulman Stromer
purchased his fine dwelling-house behind the chapel of Our Lady, with the
houses pertaining thereto, and his share in the Rigler's house for two
thousand eight hundred gulden. For such a sum as was demanded a whole
street in Nuremberg might have been sold; nay, the great castle of
Malmsbach on the Pegnitz would lately have been bought by the city for a
thousand Rhenish gulden, but that Master Ulrich Rummel, whose it was,
would not part with it. And we were now required to pay the price of two
dozen such strongholds! It was indeed an unheard-of and devilish
extortion; and when Kubbeling came to hear of it he turned his wild-cat-
skin pocket inside out, and fell to raging and storming.

Aunt Jacoba turned pale when she heard the great sum named, and she
likewise was of opinion that old Im Hoff, who had of late been spending
much money in vows and foundations, would never give forth so vast a sum.
The richest families in Nuremberg might be moved to pay fifty, and at the
most a hundred gulden for the ransom of a Christian and a fellow-
countryman, but if even twenty might be found so open-handed, which was
not to be looked for, and if my godfather Christian Pfinzing, and the