[92] If this were a history of the craft and trade of shoemaking, attention might be called to the genuinely illustrious _shoemaker_, Nicholas Lestage of Bordeaux. This clever artisan having made a remarkably fine pair of boots, presented them to the king, Louis XIV., on his visit to Bordeaux, shortly before his marriage to the Infanta of Spain. The fortunate son of Crispin was made shoemaker to his Majesty, and rose rapidly to wealth and favor at court. In 1663 he presented to his royal patron the famous boot "without a seam," which was spoken of as a "miracle of art," and of which it was declared that "the name of a boot would fill the world." About a dozen years after Lestage succeeded in making this wonderful seamless boot, a small book of poems was written to commemorate the extraordinary achievement. Among other extravagant things said about "cette admirable chaussure," it was affirmed that "neither antiquity nor the sun had ever seen its equal," "that man was not its inventor," and its structure was truly _divine_!" etc. GERMANY. HANS SACHS, THE NIGHTINGALE OF THE REFORMATION. Before Good Henry's day two famous shoemakers had appeared in Germany, whose names are now much better known than his: _Hans Sachs_, the shoemaker-poet of the Reformation, and _Jacob Boehmen_, the mystic. _Hans Sachs_ was the son of a tailor at Nuremberg, and was born November 5th, 1494. At the age of fifteen he was put apprentice in his native town. His schooling had been but slight, but he managed after school-days were passed to retain and add to the little he had learned. His studies as an apprentice soon lifted him considerably above the level of his class. All his spare time was given to poetry and music, in which arts he was greatly assisted by a clever fellow named Nunnenbeck, a weaver in the city. On attaining his majority, Sachs, after the fashion of the time, travelled as a workman from town to town throughout Germany, in order to learn his trade perfectly and see what he could of the wide world around him. In this expedition he seems to have thought as much of poetry as of shoemaking, for he never omitted, wherever he went, visiting the little poetical and musical societies which then existed in nearly every town in Germany. These societies were formed by the various trades guilds, and their members were called _meistersingers_.