Which interrupted very disagreeably the morning Homer readings and the evening Greek psalm–singing in the quiet little home we were just now peeping into. Deliration of princes indeed! Better, if fighting must needs be, to have a quarrel of your own to fight for, like the bold Magdeburgers, with Interim at their gates! But these hapless Schweinfurth citizens had their city turned to the uses of a badger–baiting tub for neither fault, quarrel, nor interest of their own. Let the upshot of the struggle be as it might, they had only ruin and destruction to fear from it. And this siege lasted for fourteen months! "For fourteen whole months did we live in the greatest possible straits, while the city was besieged;" writes Olympia to her sister. "If I were to attempt to recount to you all we went through, I should send you, not a letter, but a large volume. By day and by night we were in the midst of the missiles of the besiegers." The lawlessness of the troops within the town was a dreadful addition to their calamities. The homes of the citizens were constantly liable to predatory visits from bands of soldiers, whose "bravery, adroitness, cruelty, thievishness, and faithlessness" were quite as "brilliant" as their master's. [Sidenote: THE SIEGE.] In the ordinary and fitting course of things, pestilence soon made its appearance in a city thus circumstanced; and, together, with an excessive scarcity of food, completed the misery of its inhabitants. It now became Grünthler's duty to be found in the van of the struggle, and in the hottest of the danger. And as usual in the annals of a profession, which has, more rarely, probably, than has been the case in any other department of human effort, been found wanting in the high estimate and full discharge of its duties in times of danger and difficulty, the physician was early and late at his post, struggling hand to hand with _his_ enemy. But the fight had to be carried on under great disadvantages. All the stock of medicines in the town was exhausted. And drugs formed a larger portion of the means and appliances at the command of the skilled physician in those days, than is now the case. The sickness spread with fearful rapidity. "By contagion among the soldiers," writes Olympia,[115] "who are excessively crowded in the city, so malignant a form of disease has attacked almost the entire population, that nearly one half of the people have perished, terror and mental distress contributing no small part to the result."