But in Leipzig too Michael stayed my good and faithful friend and persevered for me and with me in our scholarly life until the following year 1410. Then both of us went back home where we found all our nearest and dearest still living including our Greek teacher Theodoros Antoniades. Mechthild Grossin was now ten having just outgrown her nanny, but, without a word of a lie—pulcherrima puella infans!
And once more the old game between this child and the squire started up. The rest of us, who all regarded the girl with cordial affection and took pleasure in her beauty, were all with almost cheerful jealousy pushed away by the crazy student and warrior from his chosen one. The chosen one, however, responded to his wondrous display of affection wholeheartedly and clung to her handsome friend with heart and mind totally.
It was a frequent cause of laughter, but the two did not lead each other astray and it would be a matter of great tenderness how affection grew from day to day, changed and yet remained the same until the year 1415 when Squire Michael Groland von Laufenholz performed his first duty for the town and for a further five years afterwards was lost to the friendship and neighbourliness on Banner Mountain.
On 20 October 1414 the Bohemian cleric Jan Huss arrived in Nuremberg with an imperial escort on his way to the Council of Constance. He was well received and had fastened to all the church doors in the town the following notice in German and in Latin:
"Jan Huss is journeying to Constance where, with God's help, he will defend to the end the beliefs he has held, still holds and always will hold."
And the call for disputation was immediately echoed. Master Albert, the parish priest of Saint Sebaldus, held enthusiastic dispute with his Bohemian counterpart for a full four hours till they had both come to a peaceful conclusion. And then Master Jan, with a happy memory of the good reception he had received in Nuremberg, continued on his way to the Council of Constance, to incarceration and burning at the stake. Around the time of the council my good friend, Squire von Laufenholz, went missing. In the following year, 1415, the town council of Nuremberg represented by Peter Volkhamer and the preacher at the church of Saint Lawrence, Johann von Hollfeldt, along with his factor, Ulrich Teuchsler, prepared itself to go to Constance too. Squire Groland from Gleven went with them from the town square as the leader of their military escort. He delivered them to Constance happy and intact, was knighted by the Emperor Sigismund himself and lost himself in Italy till the year 1420.
The men our town council had sent to Constance came home and told what they knew. My wild friend conveyed his thanks to the town for soundly nurturing him, a thanks bordering on tongue-in-cheekness, for he added that he hoped to pay them back twice and three times over. All they had to do was to be patient and to wait willingly. How it would come about, he would be the first to admit that he did not know himself. But time would fortunately attend to these matters, so that all would come good in the end.
At this all heads were thoroughly shaken. But I for my part knew best how the land lay in my friend's feelings and thoughts. I had been the one closest to how the young eagle had pulled at his chains from the day on which that unfledged nestling had been brought to my father's house for the first time.
Now we sat alone, the Greek tutor Theodoros Antoniades and I, in a small room during winter, in the bower during summer and Michael Groland never once disturbed us by pushing parchments across the table with his elbow and getting Mechthild to look at the handwriting on them and laughing: "The world today is still as merry as it was a thousand years ago! A whole sack full of your Aristotle, Master Theodoros, does not outweigh it. Laugh at them, child, these sullen fools, laugh and get bigger and wait for me. We'll show this peevish world then that we can still earn a wreath of flowers for ourselves on Judgement Day with a brave heart and a merry mind!"
Mechthildis means heroine, mighty female warrior, and there is no other name among men that has so noble a sound as this one! I have grown old and see each year how the youth and the beauty of women come to pass anew. But no bud, as far as my eyes can reach, has opened to a blossom that was more sweet-natured and more beautiful than that which grew to fullness in the great neighbouring garden among sisters awaiting there the crowning glory of its fate.