Though a writer's place could easily be had away from Spires, I would not leave my brother or the city before the termination of the lawsuit. We also hoped that the chamber would be reconstituted at the next diet. For all these reasons combined I entered into the service of my father's procurator, Simeon Engelhardt. I might as well have taken service in hell. Dr. Engelhard was an honest man, but he and his family belonged to the Schwenkfeld sect.[[28]] He had three daughters and a son between eight and nine whom I had to teach his declensions and conjugations. The matron of the establishment was a virago of the worst description, mean and bitter-spoken, who grudged her husband his food. Often and often did I see her snatch the glass from his lips. People may think she did it for the best, lest he should get drunk. Not in the least; she did that kind of thing at the family table; besides, his worst enemy could not have called him a wine-bibber. The pewter goblet of each child (there were two grown-up daughters) held about the contents of a pigeon's seed-box. The cup was filled once with wine, twice with Mayence beer (an abominable concoction), after which you were at liberty to swill as much water as you pleased. As for the two servants and the two scribes, the pittance was meagre indeed. A piece of meat not as big as an egg, floating in beef tea pellucid to a degree. This was followed by cabbages, turnips, lentils, herbs, oatmeal porridge, dried potatoes, etc., even on fish days. At the end of the meal a goblet (?) of wine. Whoever was thirsty after that--a by no means uncommon state of things--could go and pull the well-rope. Truly, it would be difficult to say how much water I swallowed in that house.
Dr. Simeon Engelhardt had nearly as many lawsuits on hand as Dr. Reiffstock, about four hundred. Each document was copied four times. The first remained with the principal bundle of papers, the second was sent to the client, the third and fourth went to the registry of the court which kept one, wrote the word "Productum" on the other, and dispatched it immediately by the beadle to the procurator of the opposing party. There were two sittings per week, sometimes a third for fiscal cases.
The copying of the protocol and of the acts imposed very hard work upon us. Being only two clerks, there was no time, on court days, for swallowing a piece of bread. On the other hand, the mistress of the house took no notice of anything like that. What her daughters or the servant girls could have done, namely, laying the table, bringing the cold or hot water for washing up, clearing the table and getting rid of the dish-water; all this came to Bartholomäi's share, whether he happened to be head over heels in other work or not, and the master of the house did not dare to utter a syllable. Amidst the biggest stress of business, when we did without our meals, the lady cried across the yard: "Bartholomäi, will you mind troubling yourself to come and throw the dish-water away?" And as if the satire was not obvious enough, she added: "Look at the lazy scamp. He has not attended to the water at all." I was forbidden to go out without asking, even to call upon my brother. Nor was this all. In the morning I saved the servant girls marketing; a basket slung on my arm like Gretchen, I bought the provisions for the household; cabbages, turnips, bread, and what not, and when I came back there was faultfinding without end for not having haggled enough. On washing day, which came round too often to please me, I pumped the water. When the pump was out of order it was I who went down the well to repair the mischief. And I was not a child, but a young man of twenty-three. I was paying for the good times of Stralsund. At each visit my brother was bewailing my fate and preaching patience. "In days to come, when you shall have a wife, children, and servants of your own, you will be able to tell them of your less happy days."
When Mistress Engelhardt was in her "tantrums," she went about for a week without addressing a friendly word to her husband. At such periods her son Solomon would come into the office to tell me that his father was a dissipated brute who had not slept with his mother for a week, etc., etc. The youngest of the girls fell ill and died; her mother put the corpse into a sack in guise of a coffin. An old crone carried it to the cemetery on her back. One can only hope that she dug a grave and placed her burden into it, for no one accompanied the dead child; no one superintended the burial.
Thanks to his capital practice, made up of the nobles and the cities paying him yearly retaining fees, thanks also to the avarice of this virago, Dr. Engelhardt easily put aside two thousand florins per annum. He lent money to the client-cities at interest. For two years running I made payments of two thousand florins each on a simple receipt.
In 1543, on his return from Italy, the emperor hurried on his preparations for a war against the Duke of Juliers. Ulm and Augsburg cast some magnificent pieces of field artillery, with their carriages and wheels; and as it was considered easier to transport the carriages separately, a numberless troop of Swabian carters was engaged. His Imperial Majesty stayed at Spires, the artillery not being ready. Autumn overtook him, and as the roads of the Netherlands were very bad at that season, his Majesty, to his great vexation, had to defer the attack. One day, being on horseback, he hustled a waggoner whose team proceeded too slowly to his taste, and spoke, moreover, very harshly to him. The Swabian, who had no idea of the identity of his interlocutor, merely made a grimace and shrugged his shoulders. A smart rap with a riding crop from the emperor was the result. So far from submitting, however, the stubborn clown promptly belabours his assailant's head with his whip, uttering imprecations all the while: "May the thunder strike and blast you, you scum of a Spaniard," and so forth. Of course the emperor's suite laid hold of him, and he had to pay dearly for his mistake. Not so dearly, though, as he might have done if the colonels entrusted with inquiries and the drawing up of the indictment had not purposely dragged the thing along to let the emperor's anger spend itself. Charles had forgotten all about the affair. He probably thought that his orders had been carried out and that the Swabian culprit was comfortably swinging from this or that gibbet, when the said colonels and captains humbly submitted the reasons for his being pardoned. There was first of all the ignorance of the waggoner, secondly the often excessive roughness of the Spaniards towards these poor Swabians. Furthermore, there was the august leniency of all great potentates and the gratitude of which the army would feel bound to give proof, if it were exercised upon such an occasion as the present. The prince relented to the extent of deciding that the culprit should have his nose cut off in memory of the assault. The colonels and the captains expressed their respectful gratitude, and the condemned man learnt the commutation of his sentence with great joy. They cut off his nose flush with his face. He bore the operation with a good grace, and for the remainder of his life sang the praises of the emperor. For many years he could be seen urging his cattle along the roads between the Rhine and the Danube. I happened to come several times into contact with him at the inns. I asked him before other travellers about the nature of the accident that had cost him his nose, whether he had left it in the French country. "Nay, nay," he replied, and with great glee recounted his adventure, showering blessings on his Imperial Majesty.
While the emperor was warring in Africa, Martin van Rosse[[29]] profited by the diversion to work his own will in the Netherlands. He had, for instance, imposed a ransom on Antwerp on the penalty of burning it to the ground. His Majesty, having learnt that he was conducting the expedition as a landsknecht, felt curious to get a glimpse of this personage. Martin van Rosse was warned too late; the emperor was already there. He pulled up his horse before the rebel. The latter, dropping on his knee, begged that the past might be forgotten, and swore to shed his last drop of blood for the emperor, who touched him lightly with his stick on the shoulder, and forgave him everything. "We forgive you, Martin," he said, "but do not begin again."
On February 20, 1544, the Diet was opened at Spires. I have heard it said that the Elector Palatine Lewis always endeavoured to dissuade his Majesty from choosing that town, because his mathematicus had predicted that he should die at Spires. In consequence of this, perhaps, he presented himself in person to the emperor at the very beginning of the session, and at the end of a few days took his leave to return to Heidelberg, where he died on March 16.
In default of a church, the Elector of Saxony had religious service performed in a tavern where he had put up a seat for the ministers. Lutes, fifes, cornets, trumpets and violins, instead of an organ, constituted a most agreeable concert. The elector's horse was a most robust animal, and there was a stepping stone attached to his saddle.
On the eve of Maundy Thursday at sunset twenty-four flagellants of both sexes marched by in their shirts, their faces covered with pieces of stuff into which were cut holes for their eyes and mouth, their backs sufficiently bare for the birch provided with steel-pointed hooks to touch the flesh. It was a hideous spectacle, the hooks tearing pieces of flesh away, and causing the blood to trickle down to the ground. The penitents advanced very slowly, one by one, in two single files, divided as it were by Spanish gentlemen of high degree, each carrying a thick wax candle. The whole street was lighted with them. When they reached the church of the barefooted Carmelites the procession fell on its knees and dragged itself from the porch to the crucifix in the choir in that way. Near the entrance the surgeons dressed the wounds; rumour had it that two corpses were carried away.