He had a voice that boomed and reverberated. In came the three wandering students. “Why, here are others of the time’s darlings!” cried Walther von Langen.
Conrad Devilson put down his tankard and got to his feet. “Eberhard, Eberhard! Welcome to Hauptberg!”
He left the table to put his arm around Eberhard. “This is the man who saved me from wolves in the Black Forest!—Then sat we down in the snow and re-ordered the round world!”
“I remember,” said Eberhard, “that your world turned from east to west!—Have you heard the Wittenberg news?”
Hans Knapp had a huge, great fire. His ale was famous, and so were Frau Knapp’s pasties, one of which Gretchen now set upon the table. Gretchen had a warm, sidelong glance, and cheeks and lips like roses. She was not so young as once she had been, and she knew how to like all wandering students and to keep all at arms’ length. Now she went about the inn room like a large and cheerful rose. The fire roared in the chimney—entered other patrons of the Golden Eagle. And all were men of the new times—of the times that were growing newer and newer, the old passing faster and faster into the new. A great part of the old resisted, held fiercely back with cries and objurgations. But those who came about the Golden Eagle were of the new, with its virtues and its faults. Hans Knapp, grey-bearded, huge-paunched, merry-eyed, had himself always stepped out with the new. The fire roared in the chimney, the Wittenberg news flew around the room, danced in the corners and in the middle. Arose loud discussion, the friendliness of substantial agreement, the spice of accidental difference. Speculation, jubilation, mounted high and mounted higher—men’s arms were over one another’s shoulders, eager faces craned, eyes sparkled. The Golden Eagle knew again the roaring blast of hope, excitement, the good, salt taste, the rapid motion of mental adventure. Happy were the five wandering students....
Said Conrad Devilson, “Let us go tell Gabriel Mayr and Thekla!”
The short afternoon was now at mid-stroke. Gabriel Mayr lived in a small, red and brown house set between a woodcarver’s and a goldsmith’s. Around the house went a ribbon of garden, with currant bushes and cherry trees. Under a cherry tree in summer, in the chimney corner in winter, sat Gabriel Mayr, about him all the books he could buy or borrow. He was poor, but since his fifteenth year he had first purchased knowledge and then purchased bodily food. Now he was eighty.
The Golden Eagle had been growing too heated. The crisp, clean cold without refreshed, cleared heads. Conrad Devilson, Walther von Langen, Eberhard, Albrecht, and Ulrich danced as they moved up the narrow street. Eberhard made-believe to play, viol-wise, upon his staff. They came to the small red and brown house.
“Is this the place?” asked Eberhard. “I used to dream, in Erfurt, of Gabriel Mayr! So much work has he done, in his time, for the new, splendid world!”
Conrad Devilson knocked, “Hola! Hola! Wandering students!”