Has not Herr Walther,[6] good-humouredly turning the laugh against himself, advised all those who suffer from earache to stay away from the Court of Thuringia? For my part I can never read his “Spruch”:—“Swer in den ôren siech von ungesûhte sî,” without feeling a most realistic discomfort at the din, made even in the poetry (and at 700 years’ distance!) by the alternating trains of “coming and parting guests,” for whom Landgraf Hermann’s undiscriminating hospitality had equal “welcome and speeding”; and without endorsing Herr Wolfram’s[7] regret that no Kaye, the boorish Seneschal of King Arthur’s Court, held office in the Wartburg, to keep the “good and bad” in their respective places. How intolerable the ceaseless din could be, even to one who was born in the midst of it, a little boy was dolorously feeling on a certain summer’s evening of the year 1211. The noise seemed worse than usual from the impression he had (which nobody took the slightest trouble, alas! to remove), that he was hopelessly “out of it.” When, braving the dragon which kept terrible guard over King Ortnit, murdered in his sleep (a warning, in high relief over the tower gate, to watchmen too fond of sleep), he had climbed the rough spiral staircase to the keep, he had found no welcome from the warder, intent on scanning the horizon for an eagerly expected messenger. Shouts, that sounded not all too sober, from the House of the Muleteers, warned him off _their_ premises. As for the kitchen—with the roaring of fires, and the creaking of spits, and the cursing of cooks and scullions, and the wailing of imprisoned fowl, awaiting execution under the huge table—that was Inferno! As the little boy passed the great stone steps that led to the entrance of the Palas, he put his hands in his ears; for the door of the Saal stood open, and amidst the gambols of gleemen, and the notes of every musical instrument known to the period—flageolet, guitar, organistrum, bagpipe, psaltery, tabor, lute, sackbut, rebeck and gigue—Landgraf Hermann was reminding guests (who needed small reminder) that, if ever there was an excuse for emptying flagons, it was to-day, when the little Hungarian Princess, the betrothed of his son and heir, Hermann, was due to arrive at her German home. In the Armourers’ House our little boy had been frankly snubbed; and big brother, Hermann, whom he found in it (made much of as the hero of the day), being measured, if you please, for a suit of armour (which he supposed he would need _very_ soon now), had given him the brutal advice to go back to Agnes, and Heinrich, and Conrad in the nursery—and not be forcing his company on his elders. And then, suddenly, things had changed. As he turned out of the Armourers’ smithy, with Hermann’s mocking laugh in his ears, he heard his own name called once or twice. His mother had sent one of her women in search of him, and he was to come at once to the women’s apartments.