Luther was in high spirits when he related in his Table-Talk the following tales from the Court of Brandenburg and the city of Florence. At the Offertory of the Mass the grandfather of Margrave Casimir of Brandenburg, attended by a trusty chamberlain, watching the women as they passed up to make their offering at the altar, amused themselves by counting up the adulteresses, supposed or real; as each passed the Margrave told the chamberlain to “draw” a bead of his rosary. The chamberlain’s wife happening to pass, the Margrave, to his courtier’s mortification, told him to draw a bead also for her. When, however, the Margrave’s mother came forward the chamberlain had his revenge and said: Now it’s your turn to draw. Upon which the Margrave gathered up his rosary indignantly with the words: “Let us lump all the whores together!”[1285]—The Florentine storiette he took from a book entitled “The Women of Florence.” An adulteress was desirous of entering into relations with a young man. She accordingly complained quite untruthfully to his confessor, that he had been molesting her against her will; she also brought the priest the presents she alleged he had brought her, and described how by night he climbed up to her window by means of a tree that stood beneath it. The zealous confessor thereupon, no less than three times, takes the supposed peccant lover to task; finally he speaks of the tree. Ah, thinks the young man, that’s rather a good idea, I might well try that tree. Having learned of this mode of entry he accordingly complies with the lady’s wishes. “And so,” concludes Luther, “the confessor, seeking to separate them, actually brought them together. Boundless indeed is the poetic ingenuity and cunning of woman.”[1286] * * * * * Strong as was Luther’s whimsical bent, yet we are justified in asking whether the delightful and morally so valuable gift of humour in its truest sense was really his. “Genuine humour is ever kindly,” rightly says Alb. Roderich, “and only savages shoot with poisoned darts.” Humour as an ethical quality is the aptitude so to rise above this petty world as to see and smile at the follies and light sides of human life; it has been defined as an optimistic kind of comedy which laughs at what is funny without, however, hating it, and which lays stress on the kindlier side of what it ridicules.