The dukes of Pomerania had unquestionably cause for anxiety, for their relations with the emperor were already very strained, and the latter's victory made him very disinclined to exercise much consideration to the partisans of the Augsburg confession. Simon Wolder was jubilant; he looked upon the business as good as won; judges and assessors were papists, and their Highnesses under a cloud of Imperial disgrace. We devoted the most serious attention at Spires to the suit; procurator Ziegler and advocate Johannes Kalte amply did their duty; if need had been, I was there to spur them on. At Stettin, on the contrary, Martin Weyer and Dr. Schwallenberger, to whom the affair was entrusted, were mere sluggards whose conduct was disgraceful. We shall meet with Schwallenberger again.
In May our counsellors wrote to me to take the two golden cups to Brussels to them. The rumour ran, in fact, that the emperor's son was coming from Spain in great pomp; and our envoys hoped to secure, through the influence of certain important personages, his intercession with the emperor. I started immediately, going down the Rhine as far as the Meuse, and pursuing my journey by land by way of s'Hertogenbosch (Bois le Due) and Louvain.
When I had delivered my precious deposit, the wish to see something of Flanders impelled me to Ghent. It is a big city, formerly endowed with important privileges. For instance, the emperor could impose no taxes in Flanders or demand anything without the assent of the said city. Charles V has deprived it of its privileges. He has razed a convent and several houses to the ground, and on their site built a castle with huge, deep moats filled with water, besides other remarkable outworks, so that the city is at his mercy. In the centre of Ghent there rises a high steeple. I climbed to the top, and it is from there that the emperor and his brother Ferdinand chose the spot whereon to build their fortress; they traced there, propriis manibus, their symbolum in red chalk.
The castle where Charles V saw the light is a decrepit, unsightly kind of tenement, surrounded by water, and accessible only by a drawbridge. At the head of the bridge, on the parapet, there are two bronze statues; one is kneeling, and behind it there is the second with uplifted sword. Tradition has it that they represent two men condemned to death, father and son, for whom no executioner could be found. They then promised the father a full pardon if he would behead his son. At his refusal the offer was made to the son, who accepted it with joy and gratitude, and severed his father's head from the trunk.
In Antwerp I met with Herr Heinrich Buchow, the future counsellor of Stralsund. We had both heard much about the house of Gaspard Duitz, about a good mile distant from the city. People compared it to the castle of Trent, some even said that it was handsomer. We obtained a letter from the owner to his steward, who showed us everything, and really rumour had not been guilty of exaggeration. Though there were a great number of them, each room was differently decorated; each contained a bed and a table. The hangings were of the same colour as the bed-curtains, and the cloth on the table which was either of velvet or damask, black, red or violet, as the case might be. Musical instruments everywhere, but varying in every room. Here a kettledrum; there Polish viols, elsewhere lutes, harps, zithers, hautboys, bassoons, Swiss fifes, etc. The girl who showed us over the place quite correctly played the kettledrum, the viol and the lute. In front of the house a beautiful garden cultivated with art, and enhanced by many exotics. Further on a zoological collection. The ground floor has one hall of such magnificence that one day Madame Marie entertained her brother there. The emperor, having looked and appreciated everything, asked: "To whom, sister mine, belongs this house?" "To our treasurer." "Well," rejoined the emperor, "our treasurer evidently knows the science of profit-making."
This Gaspard Duitz, an Italian by birth, a shrewd and even cunning merchant, had exercised commerce on a large scale at Antwerp, and failed twice if not three times. When he had thousands upon thousands of crowns in hand, he asked his creditors for five years' delay. Madame Marie, for instance, gave him such letters of respite. Of course, those rogueries made him very wealthy, and when Madame Marie was in need of money, her treasurer came to her aid. A house in Antwerp, which had cost him thousands of florins, not having realized his expectations--the drawbacks of a structure becoming only apparent after it is finished--he had it razed to the ground and rebuilt according to his taste.
The Count Maximilian van Buren (the same who, in the Schmalkalden campaign, took the Dutch horsemen to the emperor), having heard of Duitz's famous country seat, "invited himself" to it. Master Gaspard treated his visitor magnificently, showed him everything, and when taking leave inquired if perchance the count had noticed some fault or shortcoming in the decorations or general disposition of the whole; for, if such were the case, he would alter it, even if he had to send for artists from Venice or Rome. "No," replied the count; "the only thing wanting is a high gallows at the entrance, with Gaspard Duitz securely swinging from it." That was the count's acknowledgment of his host's hospitality, and he might have added: "With a crown on his head, as an arch-thief."[[64]]
From Antwerp I went to Malines. What an admirable country! Louvain, Brussels and Antwerp, three big and handsome cities, are at an equal distance from each other, and Malines, which one always has to cross to get to either, stands in the centre. Along the route there are magnificent castles and lordly dwellings. Malines is a pretty city, though the smallest of the four; the water is brought there labore et industriâ hominum, and enables one to reach Antwerp by boat. I saw the damage caused by the lightning of August 7, 1546, when it fell on a powder magazine, which was entirely destroyed, together with the outer wall; huge quarters were hurled on the roofs of houses. There was a great loss of life and property.
At Malines I went to see Vogel Heine, who, in the days of Maximilian I, the great-great-grandfather of the present emperor, went in advance to prepare the night quarters. The emperor had left him sufficient to live upon; the woman who took care of him had her lodging and firing. Heine was so old and so decrepit as to be unable to stir from a room that was constantly heated. People gave the woman a small tip to see her charge, and in that way she made for herself a small income instead of wages.
From Louvain I took the most direct and shortest road to Juliers and Cologne; at the latter place I put up at The Angel. The host had a raven that spoke, and even understood what was said to it. If, in the evening, there was a knock at the door, the bird asked: "Is anybody knocking?" "Yes," replied the new-comer. But as the travellers' room happened to be at the back of the house, overlooking the Rhine, nobody stirred, and the knocking was repeated, the bird, on its part, repeating the same question. "Can't you hear?" said the claimant for admission, out of patience, and knocking much louder, so that they could hear it from the travellers' room. Naturally, the servant came to open the door, and endeavoured to mollify the would-be guest's anger by saying that they had heard no knocking. Thereupon the other called him a liar, or at any rate treated him as such; thereupon the cage with the bird in it was pointed out as evidence, and everything was well. The bird, upon the whole, was most remarkable, and many great personages made the most tempting offers for it, which were always refused. Six or seven years later, when I visited Cologne again, I inquired what had become of the bird, and its owner told me that he was then at law with a gentleman who, coming in drunk, had drawn his sword and cut the bird's head off. The host assured me that he would sooner have lost three hundred crowns.