“I must pray,” quoth Jerome very deliberately.
“While the angels weep, and God our Father wonders why he has spared you so long from burning.”
“Why that reproach from you, woman?”
“He! ho! Our Saint has still his pride, because if you were a ritter with twelve-score lanzknechts it would be a crying sin to be so nigh the Wartburg, and never wing a shaft for rescue; while you, the Saint of the Dragon’s Dale, who have the power of seven ritters, mock God by saying, ‘I must pray,’ and leave Ulrich to work out his evil will.”
Jerome stared still harder.
“I am a man of peace and vowed to the works thereof.”
“And to Ulrich of the Wartburg is not the little finger of a saint thicker than the loins of a markgraf?”
“Saint? Have I not commanded—?”
Witch Martha threw up her little hands, while her fat body swayed with laughter.
“Oh, think yourself Satan’s twin brother if you will! But you know all Thuringia calls you the ‘Saint of the Dragon’s Dale,’—and just because you will keep yourself aloof and see but three men in a twelvemonth your fame grows. Ay, this very night there will be five hundred souls from Gotha to Meiningen who will add, ‘Sancte Hieronyme Eisenachæ ora pro nobis’ after they have petitioned St. James and Our Lady.”