Pictures of German Life in the XVth, XVIth, and XVIIth Centuries, Vol. I.

by Gustav Freytag

CHAPTER IX.

THE MARRIAGE AND HOUSEKEEPING OF A
YOUNG STUDENT.

(1557.)

The chief charm of the life of the olden time consists in the graceful manifestation of those feelings which give brightness to our life; the passions of lovers, the deep affection of husband and wife, the tenderness of parents, and the piety of children. We are enabled in each period of the past to distinguish the universal attributes of human nature, nay, even the specific German characteristics of love and marriage, but these tender relations are precisely those which are often enveloped in much that is transitory and enigmatical. We have often to seek mild and humane feelings under repulsive forms.

But two things have always been valued in Germany. In the first place it was a pre-eminent peculiarity of the Germans that they honoured the dignity of the female sex. Their women were the prophetesses of the heathen time, and, according to the laws of the people, whosoever killed a maiden or widow had to atone for it by the severest punishment. In times of strife and war, women enjoyed protection of person and property. Whilst Totila, Prince of the Goths, destroyed the men in Italy, the honour and life of the women were preserved, and the misbehaviour of a Goth to a Neapolitan woman was punished with death. It moreover appears from the Sachsenspiegel, that the same laws prevailed in the North even during the time of the cruel Hussite wars.

Of all the misdeeds of the Spanish soldiers who accompanied Charles V. into Germany in the sixteenth century, their ill-treatment of women excited the greatest indignation. The infamous conduct of some Passau soldiers of the Archduke Leopold towards the women of Alsace, even in 1611, was particularly repugnant to the people, and was commented on in their news-sheets. It was not till the Thirty years' war that the coarseness became universal, and women were looked upon as the booty of licentious men.

This respect for women and chaste family life was considered by the Romans the highest quality of the Germans. Even Christianity, which spread from the Roman to the German countries, could not place women and marriage on a higher footing; on the contrary, its ascetic tendencies served to lower them. The full enjoyment of the pleasures of the world were no longer allowed to man; passionate devotion to a beloved husband was easily mistaken for a wrong to heaven and the holy Redeemer. On the other hand men fixed their eyes on the heavenly Virgin, whose especial favour they might win by despising the women of earth. At the time of the Saxon Emperors this tendency of the mind reached its highest point. In those days education was confined to the cloister; there the daughters of the nobility were educated; there men weary of sin retired; and there also, enthusiasm sought for the highest enjoyment of love, which seemed unattainable in marriage without danger to the salvation of the soul. Secret sensuality mixed even with the worship of the highest objects of faith.

But the heart of man could not long rest satisfied with ideal love in heaven. When, under the first Hohenstaufen, education, manners, and good taste were only to be found among the feudal nobility, they hastened to transfer to the women of this world the devotion and veneration which had been exclusively confined to the Virgin Mary. The courtly worship of woman began, new conventional forms were introduced for the intercourse between man and woman, accompanied in Germany with a strong intermixture of Italian manners. The man had to give proof of his love by heroic deeds and adventures, and his lady-love was surrounded by an atmosphere of poetry, and veiled in ideal perfections, as we may perceive in the numerous minne-songs of that time. But neither the dignity of woman, nor the fundamental morality of marriage, was increased by this chivalrous devotion, and it became a cloak for reckless profligacy. Sometimes even a married woman had a knight devoted to her service; he was invested kneeling before his liege lady, and she, laying her hands between his, confirmed his allegiance by a kiss. From that time he wore her colours; he was bound to be faithful to her, and she to him, and in some cases they lived together as man and wife; and there were even instances in which the Church gave its sanction to these improper unions.

This knightly service often led men into the greatest follies. For instance, Pierre Vidal of Toulouse went about on all-fours in a wolfs skin, in honour of his lady, till he was beaten and bitten almost to death by the shepherds and sheep dogs; and Ulrich von Lichtenstein, who rode through the whole country in woman's clothes, challenging all the knights, and had his finger and upper lip cut off in honour of his lady, drank the water in which she had washed, and when he returned from his expeditions, was nursed by his wife. These are not the worst examples of the horrible eccentricities to which this knightly devotion led. The result was such as might be expected,--the glitter of romance soon disappeared, and coarse profligacy remained in its nakedness.

The Church did little to improve this state of things. There were individual popular preachers who courageously advocated marriage and chastity, but it was at this very time that the celibacy of the secular clergy was established, and that the mass of the people were reduced to bondage by the feudal lords. The purity of marriage and the happiness of families were not promoted either by the position of the village priest living in his parish without a legal wife, nor by that of the proprietor who had to give his sanction to marriages, received tribute on account of them, and even laid shameful claims on the person of the bride.

On the other hand there arose in the cities a fresh and vigorous life, and from the fourteenth century, the citizens became the best representatives of German cultivation and manners, as once the ecclesiastics had been, and afterwards the nobles. Owing to the close proximity of the dwellings in the city, and the smallness of their houses, the intercourse between man and woman became more strictly defined, and on the whole a practical sound conception of life took the place of chivalrous fancies; citizen habits followed courtly manners; ladies were won by cautious wooing instead of by daring heroic deeds; maidenly modesty attracted more than haughty assumption; instead of the wild knightly life of the nobles, which frequently separated man and wife, and violently severed the marriage tie, the woman now obtained a quiet sway in the well-regulated house, and the bold courtesy of the knight was replaced by a considerate, though strictly regulated and sometimes rather formal, expression of heartfelt esteem.

The conception of propriety and purity was different, however, from what it is now. At the time of the Council of Constance, the refined Poggio relates with great satisfaction how at Baden near Zurich, the most fashionable bath of the fifteenth century, he had seen German men and women bathing together, and how delightfully naïve their familiarity was. And even a century later Hutten praises this German custom in contradistinction to the Italian morals, which would have made this practice impossible. So tolerant still were the German Humanitarians.

Marriage, however, was considered by our ancestors less as a union of two lovers, than as an institution replete with duties and rights, not only of married people towards one another, but also towards their relatives--as a bond uniting two corporate bodies. The relations of the wife became also the friends of the man, and they had claims on him as he had on them. Therefore in the olden time, the choice of husband and wife was always an affair of importance to the relatives on both sides, so that a German wooing, from the oldest times up to the last century, had the appearance of a business transaction, which was carried out with great regard to suitability. This perhaps takes away from German courtship, somewhat of the charm which we expect to find where the heart of man beats strongly; but this circumspect method of weighing things is a characteristic sign of an earnest and great conception of life. If a man desired to ask a woman in marriage he had to go through several solemn family negotiations. First the wooing, for which he had to employ a mediator; not always the lather or any other head of his family, but often some man of consideration in the town or country. This ambassador was generally accompanied by the wooer himself with a troop of his companions: if it took place in the country, they rode in solemn procession. If the family of the maiden was favourably disposed, they considered this as the preliminary step, and fixed a time for the negotiations between the families to take place. Formerly the man had to buy his wife from her family; but when this old custom fell into disuse, there still remained the arrangements concerning the dowry which the bride had to bring to her husband, and the jointure which he had to settle upon her. There were added to this, though not compulsory yet as a standing custom, presents of the man to the parents, brothers, and sisters of the bride, or from the bride to the family and best-men of the bridegroom. After this consultation, followed the betrothal, which had to take place in the presence of the rightful guardians: amidst the circle of witnesses, both parties had solemnly to declare that they would take each other in marriage; after which a ring was placed on the finger of the bride by the bridegroom; they embraced and kissed, thus showing the passing of the maiden into the family and guardianship of the man. After this betrothal, a certain space of time having elapsed, the termination of which was in many places legally fixed, the solemn fetching home of the bride to the house of the bridegroom took place. Again there was a solemn procession to the house of the maiden, and even if the bridegroom was present he was obliged to have a spokesman, who once more wooed her before the assembled family, and gave her over to the bridegroom; then she was taken in procession to the house of the latter, where the bridal feast was held. It was a bad custom in the middle ages, that this repast was got up with an extravagance which far surpassed the means of the bridal couple; and there were numerous police regulations endeavouring to limit the luxury in music, dishes, and the number of tables[^[52]] and feast days.

Such was the marriage ceremonial of the Germans. The old custom of the bridal wreath, which was worn by both bride and bridegroom, was introduced into Germany from Rome. The consecration of marriage by the Church was only required from the time of the Carlovingians, and was seldom neglected by the nobility, but did not become general among the people till a later period. The Church had indeed raised marriage to the dignity of a sacrament; but a feeling remained among the people that Christianity looked coldly and sternly on it. Even in the fifteenth century the consecration of marriage by the Church was not entirely established, nor does it take place to this day in many places before the fetching home of the bride.

In this respect also, Luther and the Reformation had a great influence. From the sixteenth century the consecration of marriage by the Church became in the Protestant countries the essential part of the ceremony; from that time the old customs of betrothals and of fetching home the bride were secondary considerations. It was not till after Luther and the Council of Trent, that marriage became intimately connected with the Christian faith in the German mind; for then the different confessions endeavoured by educating and elevating the people, to make them comprehend the moral and domestic significance of marriage.

And how was it with the heart of lovers? The following example will show how true love germinated amidst all the various family interests.

Felix Platter, the son of Thomas Platter, burgher, printer, schoolmaster, and householder at Basle, was born in 1536. His father by unwearied activity had risen from the greatest poverty, and had up to an advanced age to struggle with anxieties for his maintenance, and with pecuniary embarrassments, in consequence of the constant extension of his business. This hard battle with life had exercised its usual influence on his mind; he had a restless spirit of enterprise, which sometimes hindered him from steadily pursuing a plan; he had no real self-confidence, was easily perplexed, irritable, and morose. His son Felix, the only child by his first marriage, had on the contrary inherited the joyous disposition of his single-minded mother; he was a jolly warm-hearted lad, rather vain, passionately fond of music and dancing, at the same time clever, open and ingenuous. He was still almost a boy when his father sent him from Basle to the celebrated medical college of the university of Montpellier. Felix having acquired there, not only everything that medical science then offered, but all kinds of French refinements, returned to the simple burgher life of his native town: at the age of one-and-twenty he took his degree as doctor, and married happily a maiden about whom he had been teased when a child. He gained a great reputation, became Professor of the university, and a man of opulence and consideration, and died at an advanced age. He was of the greatest service to the city of Basle, by his self-sacrificing activity at the time of the plague, and also to the medical faculty of his university by his learning; and he was often consulted as a physician of renown by persons of princely rank both in Germany and France. He laid out a botanic garden at Basle, and possessed a cabinet of physical science worthy of being shown for money. Like his father, he wrote an account of part of his life: the following fragment is taken from a printed edition of the manuscript, entitled 'Thomas and Felix Platter, two Autobiographies, by Dr. D. A. Fechter, Basle, 1840.'

The narrative begins with that day on which the young Felix returns with all the self-confidence of a scholar to his native town.

"I was welcomed home by all my neighbours, and there was great rejoicing; the servant-maid of the midwife, Dorly Becherer, as I learnt afterwards, gained the botenbrot[^[53]] from my intended, by running to her father's house and screaming out the news, which she did so loud as quite to frighten her. Supper was prepared, and some of my companions who had heard of my arrival, and had forthwith come to visit me, stayed for it. After supper we escorted them to the Crown inn, and going down the Freienstrasse, my intended saw me passing by in my Spanish cap, and she fled. The innkeeper, who had himself been wooing her, bantered me, so that I perceived the affair was pretty well known: after that I returned home.

"The following morning, Hummel came to me to take me about the town. We first passed the Minster close, there Herr Ludwig von Rischach spied me out, and was wondering who I was, because I wore a velvet barret cap and arms: I made myself known to him; then I saluted Dr. Sulzer, pastor of the Minster; afterwards, Dr. Hans Huber, who welcomed me kindly and offered me his services; I made him a present of Clemens Marot, which had been beautifully bound at Paris.

"After that we went down Martin's Alley, and when we arrived at the bottom of it, opposite the school, my intended, who was standing by the bench saw me, though I did not see her; she ran into the school and home again; and after that she no longer went to the shops of the butchers, because they began to tease her. After dinner my father took me to his property at Gundeldingen; he talked to me on the road, and exhorted me not to speak too fast, as the French are apt to do, and gave me an account of his household. I began immediately to prepare my cypress lute, and to string the large harp which my father had formerly played; and I put my books and manuscripts in order; thus I spent the whole week.

"Meanwhile my father arranged matters that I might talk with my intended, and she with me; he therefore invited Master Franz and his daughter to come out to Gundeldingen the following Sunday afternoon; it was the sixteenth of May, a merry spring day. I went out there after dinner with Thiebold Schönauer; we had sent on our lutes, and when we entered the yard at Gundeldingen we saw two maidens standing there; one was the cousin of the landlady, and engaged to Daniel the son of Master Franz, the other was his daughter Magdalen, my intended, whom I greeted cordially, as she did me, not without changing colour. Thus we got into converse; her brother Daniel joined us; we walked about the property, talking of divers things; my intended was modest, bashful, and quiet. At three o'clock we returned to the house, and went up stairs; I and Thiebold played the lute, and I danced the gaillarde, as was my custom. Meanwhile, Master Franz, her father, arrived and welcomed me; we sat down to table and had an evening drink as at supper, till it was late, and time for us to return to town. On the road homewards, her father and mine went in advance, and I and Daniel followed with the ladies in friendly talk, when Dorothy, who was somewhat bold of speech, burst forth, saying, 'When two are fond of each other they should make no delay, for one knows not how quick a misfortune may come between them.' Near the ramparts we separated, Master Franz and his party went home through the Stein gate, and my father and his through the Eschemer gate. We all went to bed full of curious thoughts about myself.

"My father-in-law and my father took counsel together, to make our engagement sure. I began to love her very much, and urged it on. I also was not disagreeable to her, which I had partly found out from herself, when the wife of the butcher, Burlacher, my mother's cousin, had invited us to her meadow before the Spalen gate to eat cherries, where we had been able to speak openly. It was determined that Dr. Hans Huber should make the proposal for me. When my father asked it of him, he readily assented, appointed Master Franz in the forenoon to meet him at the Minster, made the proposal, and gained his consent for a family marriage counsel. In the evening, when Dr. Hans came to me, he announced it to me with exultation, as was his wont, and congratulated me; but informed me that my father-in-law wished the affair to be kept quiet till my doctorate was over, when matters might proceed. I was well satisfied therewith, as my future father-in-law was at last inclined to consent. Formerly, he had always held back because he feared that my father was greatly in debt, and because he had boarders; for, as he said, he did not wish his daughter to be thrown into debts and disquietudes. But when he heard from my father that his debts were small in comparison with his property in land and houses, and that he himself intended to do away with the boarders, he was satisfied; and so much the more as Herr Caspar Krug, afterwards burgomaster, who had seen me, advised him, and because his son Ludwig told him he ought to thank God, as he had good hopes that I should become a renowned doctor, for I had shown my skill in curing his wife (who was weak after giving birth to two children) by giving her marchpane, which I had ordered when it was not yet the custom to do so. So my father-in-law was at last well pleased, and did not object to my going to his house to speak with his daughter. Yet I did this mostly in his absence, and secretly. I entered by the back door in the alley, and talked to her there in the lower part of the house, with due propriety and honour. Her father did not object, but appeared not to notice it; he also deferred matters as long as he could, for he did not like to give away his daughter, who, as he boasted, kept house so well for him.

"About this time, Thomas Guerin was engaged to Jungfrau Elizabeth of the Falcon. He frequently came to me with Pempelfort, and begged of me to arrange a musical serenade, to do homage to his love at the Falcon. I promised him this, but under the condition that a serenade should also be given at any place that I chose. So we equipped ourselves, and went, late after supper, in front of the house of my intended. We had two lutes, I and Thiebold Schönaur played together, afterwards I took the harp, and Pempelfort the viola. The goldsmith Hogenbach whistled an accompaniment, and it was altogether quite fine music; no one took any notice of us, for my future father-in-law was at home. Then we went to the Falcon, and there, after we had paid our court, we were admitted, and had a splendid night-cup, with all kinds of sweetmeats; when we were returning home, the watchmen stopped us at the Green King, but they let us go after we had given them satisfactory answers. I often took a walk to the house of my intended, but as far as possible, secretly, and talked much whimsical nonsense, as lovers do, which she answered discreetly. I dressed myself also, according to custom, for then we wore only coloured clothes, and not black, except for mourning. Certain persons now began to watch me, and once when I left the house after supper, two men followed me, and would willingly have beaten me, but I escaped, so that nothing happened to me.

"Soon after I had become a doctor my father urged that the marriage should be concluded between me and the Jungfrau Magdalen; and therefore, towards the end of September, he spoke to her father, and as I had honourably and praiseworthily fulfilled everything, and the matter had not remained secret, he could not object to settling it--thereupon he gave a satisfactory answer, but kept always delaying the affair, for, as aforesaid, he was unwilling to part with his daughter. Meanwhile I was allowed to go to the house openly; but it surprised me that it did not displease him, as it was not yet a settled marriage, and, indeed, might never have taken place; our intercourse, however, was carried on with all due propriety and honour, and we held converse on divers discreet subjects, and had much joking and bantering, and often I helped her to make electuaries, and thus we passed the time. We had once particularly good fun; when on the eve of St. Simon and St. Jude they rang the bells for the fair, I wished to get a fairing from her. As her father was absent, I went secretly to the back door of her house which was constantly open, and seeing no one, as all were in the chamber below, I slipped up the stairs to the garret, and looked out of the skylight in order to hear when the bells rang in the fair at twelve. I waited for three hours, both cold and weary; as soon as the bells began to sound, I slipped down and opened the door of the room crying out, 'Give me a fairing,' thinking thereby to surprise her. There was no one there, and the maid said, as she had been told to do, that she was gone out; but she had hidden herself under the staircase, and was waiting; soon after she hastened into the room with the usual exclamation, and gained from me the fairing. This I gave her handsomely, and she gave me one also. I wished to present her with the little chain that I had brought with me from Paris, but she begged me to keep it, as it might give occasion for gossip, and she might have it at some other time; but she took the little beautifully bound Testament which I had also offered her; thus we had our pastime for a long period, as is usual with young people.

"After the fair at Basle, my father-in-law, as he could no longer delay, began to prepare for the betrothal, and it was fixed for the week after St. Martin's day. We came about four o'clock to his house; there were assembled on his side Herr Caspar Krug, afterwards burgomaster, Martin Fickler, and Master Gregorius Schölin, and Batt Hug, his friends, and his son Franz Jeckelmann; there were on our side Dr. Hans Huber, Matthias Bornhart, and Henricus Petri. They negotiated about the dowry, and my future father-in-law announced that his daughter would bring with her more than three hundred pounds' worth of property; of this there would be one hundred florins of ready money, and the rest in clothes and linen. When they asked my father what he would give, he replied he could not say; he had no child but me, and all would be mine. But when they told him that he must name something, as there might be changes (as did, indeed, afterwards happen),[^[54]] he answered that he had not reflected upon this, so he would name four hundred gulden; but that as he could not give it me we should board with him instead, for he had no money to give me, on the contrary he was much in debt. Thereupon arose some disputing; my father-in-law exclaimed that he would not expose his daughter to the discomfort of the boarders, and would rather have us in his house, and censured my father for being in debt, so that my father was much grieved, and if the honourable company present had not interfered, the matter would have remained unsettled. This was the first contretemps that happened to me, and was a great grief both to me and to my intended, who had heard all in the kitchen, and was in great trouble. However, the affair was smoothed, as my father said he would gladly give up the boarders, though it could not be done immediately. From that time my father was somewhat out of sorts, which embittered the whole pleasure of my nuptials. We were betrothed, and I presented my bride with the gold chain I had brought from Paris; and my father-in-law gave the banquet, with good entertainment and speeches, but there was no music, which I should have liked best.

"Great preparations were made for the marriage, which was to take place on the following Monday, for my father considering that he had an only son, wished, for the satisfaction of my father-in-law, to invite the whole of his friends and other well-wishers; so invitations were sent out on the Saturday to the relations and neighbours, and our good friends the master and councillor of the Guild of the Bear, to some of the high school, nobles, councillors, scholars, and also artisans with their wives and children.

"On the following Sunday, the 21st of October, our banns were published as is customary; the tables, and everything appertaining to the wedding were arranged in both my fathers' houses; many helped, and Master Batt Oesy, the landlord of the Angel, was cook. In the evening I went to my father-in-law's house, watched them making the nosegays, and remained with them till after supper. When I returned home I found Herr Schreiber Rust, an old acquaintance of my father's, who had come out of friendship from Burtolf to the wedding, and had brought with him a beautiful Emmenthaler cheese. He was sitting at table with my father, who was greatly disquieted, as to how he could feed and treat so large a number of people as had been invited; he persuaded himself that it would be impossible, and that he would disgrace himself, and he was quite cross. Especially, when I came home, he began to scold me very roughly for sitting always with my bride, and letting him have all the trouble, instead of helping him; and he was so angry with me that Herr Rust had enough to do to pacify and comfort him. This third cross and embittering of the happiness of my wedding was very disquieting to me, as I was not accustomed to be thus scolded, and had hitherto usually been praised and well treated; I saw clearly how it would henceforth be when there were two of us living at my father's cost, so that everything would be rendered unpleasant to me. I went to bed full of sorrow, and thought like a fool that I would like to withdraw from my present position, if the door were only open to me.

"On the morning of the 22nd of October, St. Cecilia's day, I was still dispirited, as I had slept little. I put on my bridegroom's shirt which had been sent to me, with a gold embroidered collar and many golden spangles on the short breast piece, as was the custom then, and over that a red brocaded satin waistcoat and flesh-coloured breeches. Thus I came down and found my father no longer so unjust, for when he had begun to complain again, although there was a superfluity of everything, he got a good chiding from Dorothea Schenkin, who was also helping, and was a rough-spoken woman. When the marriage guests were assembled, we went in procession to my father-in-law's house, and with us Dr. Oswald Berus, who, in spite of his great age, was dressed in an open satin waistcoat and a camlet coat, the same as mine, and a velvet barret cap, like that which was placed on my head, when in front of my bride's house, and this said cap was bordered with pearls and flowers.

"We went about nine o'clock to the Minster, and then the bride arrived in a flesh-coloured cloak, led by Herr Heinrich Petri. After the sermon they married us; I gave her a twisted ring worth eight dollars; then we proceeded to the Jagdhof, where they gave us to drink. I led my bride in, and they regaled her splendidly in the upper room.

"There were fifteen tables spread, which were well filled by more than one hundred and fifty persons, not counting those who waited upon them, and a number of them remained to supper. The entertainment proceeded after this fashion: there were four courses in the following order, a hash of mutton, soup, meat, fowls, boiled pike, a roast, pigeons, capons, geese, rice porridge, salted liver, cheese, and fruit. There were divers kinds of wines, amongst others Rangenwein, which was much to the taste of the guests. The music consisted of Christelin the trumpeter, with his viola; the singers were the scholars, who sang among other things the song of the spoon; after the dinner, which did not last as long as is now customary, Herr Jacob Meyer, the Councillor of the Bear, broke up the party. Dr. Myconius led the bride to the house of Dr. Oswald Berus, where there was dancing in the hall; there were many persons, and some of them people of consequence. Master Laurens played the lute, Christelin accompanied him on his viola, which was then less used than now. I wished to do the courteous by my bride, as I had been accustomed to do in France in dancing, but she being bashful gently admonished me, so I desisted. I danced however, at Myconius' suggestion, a gaillard alone.

"After that we returned to my father's house to supper. When it began to get late the guests took leave, and that there might not be too much noise and joking, I hid myself in my father's room, where my bride also had been secretly concealed, whose father wept so at parting with her, that I thought they would be quite ill from crying. I led her into my father's little room, and some of the women of her acquaintance came to comfort her, to whom I gave some claret to drink, which I had kept in a small cask behind the stove, and had made very good. When they departed, my mother who was always cheerful, came and said that the young students were seeking me, therefore we had better conceal ourselves and go to bed; so she led us secretly by the back stairs up to my room, where we sat for some time, and as it was very cold we were half frozen, so we commended ourselves to God and went to bed; and none of the students knew what had become of us. After a time we heard my mother come up stairs above our room; there she sat and sang with as sweet a voice as a young maiden, though she had reached a great age; whereat my bride laughed heartily.

"On the Tuesday morning her bridesmaid Kathleen brought her the rest of her clothes; we admitted her, and as she was a pleasant maiden, we had much fun with her. After that the marriage guests collected again at dinner, which took place at eleven o'clock, for then we had not turned time topsy-turvy, as is the bad custom now. There were as many tables laid as on the first day, and the entertainment was as ample; and there was in addition the bridal porridge, which is now replaced by mulled wine. After dinner they danced till night, and at supper there were still many guests, especially the maidens, who all took leave and went home in good time. There were many rich presents given at the marriage; but of these I got only a small goblet and two ducats, the rest my father took to defray the costs as far as they would, and later, as soon as I earned something, I had to pay him for my clothes. My father took also the hundred gulden that my wife had brought with her, and paid it off likewise. My father-in-law made me no present, because, as he afterwards told me, he had paid five gulden for me at the doctor's capping feast, and therewith I ought to be content. The household gear that my wife brought with her was not very good; an old pan in which they had made her porridge, and a large wooden bowl in which her mother's dinner had been brought to her during her confinements, and other bad utensils, which were placed behind a screen in our room. After that, our household arrangements were to be fixed and regulated by my wife's advice, which required great consideration. My father still continued to have boarders and all kinds of disquiet in the house, so that we young married people were much harassed; we had rather have kept house by ourselves, but we could not manage it; we were obliged for nearly three years to board with my father, and I had to make shift with my room, and to see the sick in the lower hall, which was cold in winter. There was frequent offence taken because I could not help towards the kitchen expenditure, for I had enough to do to provide ourselves with clothes, and frequently had to pay what I had just earned to the shops where I was still in debt for them; which was thrown in my teeth, if I did not do it. Thus there were at times quarrels, as often happens when old and young dwell together. Therefore my wife would have been glad if we could have dwelt by ourselves, and she would willingly have managed with very little; if my father would have given the promised dowry and the hundred gulden which she had brought to me, we could have subsisted upon that; but my father could not do this, as he had no ready money; and I did not wish to anger, but rather conciliate him, and so I spoke him fair, saying, we would have patience till I got into better practice. All this grieved me because I loved her much, and would gladly have maintained her as was meet for a doctor's wife; therefore for a long time I treated her with less familiarity and more ceremony; my father perceived this with displeasure, and thought it ought not to be. I had not much to do before the new year.

"There were many doctors at Basle when I came there, both graduates and quacks, in the year 1557. Therefore I had to be very skilful to support myself, and God has abundantly blessed me therein. From day to day I got more practice both among the inhabitants of the town, and also among the strangers, some of whom came to me and dwelt a long time here, using my remedies, whilst others went away immediately, having obtained my advice and prescription. Strangers also sent for me to their houses and castles, whither I hastened, not staying long, but returning home quickly, that I might attend to those at home as well as in distant parts."