before her own death, who added, that it was even so with herself, that she was about to follow her mother and sisters, and that she did yearn for it, and she did admonish me not to grieve thereat. "Now my parents when they were first married were comfortably established; their buildings were finished, they were prosperous, and possessed plenty of feathers, wool, honey, butter, and corn; they had their stately mill and brewery; when suddenly all this happiness changed into sorrow and misfortune: for in the same year 1523, George Hartmann, the son-in-law of Doctor Stoientin,[48] bought of my father a quarter of butter, and they came to angry words thereupon. Hartmann, who was going to carry a sword to Herr Peter Korchschwantz, went on his way to complain to his mother-in-law: she, who was haughty and very rich, had married a doctor, councillor to the prince, and looked down upon smaller people; she put an axe into his hand with these words: 'See, I give you a trifle, go to the market and buy yourself a heart.' He then met my father, who was without arms, and had not even his bread-knife with him, as he was going to have a pot of honey weighed at the weighing-place in the streets where the locksmiths lived. Hartmann, armed with sword and axe, fell upon him; my father springing into the house of one of the smiths, seized a spit; the boys tore it away from him, and also prevented him from using the ladder which was standing near the gallery; but he tore from the wall a hunting-spear, and running out into the street with it, called out: 'Where is he who wants to take my life?' thereupon Hartmann sprang out of the adjoining smith's house, having added to his former weapons a hammer from the anvil, which he threw at my father, and though he parried the blow with the spear, yet the hammer glided along the spear and hit him on the breast, so that he spit blood for some days. Immediately after, Hartmann struck him with the axe on the shoulder; having now hit him with both hammer and axe, and fancying he had the best of it, he unsheathed his sword, and rushing at my father, ran on the spear, which went into his body up to the handle, so that he fell. This is the true account of this lamentable story; I know well that the adversaries maintain that my father stabbed Hartmann when he was hiding himself behind the stove in the smith's room, but it is a mere fable. "My father hastened straight to the monastery of the Black Monks, with whom he was acquainted, and they took him into the church, up under the vaulted roof. Doctor Stoientin with many assistants and servants searched every corner of the monastery, and came also into the church. My father, thinking they saw him, was on the point of speaking out and entreating that they would spare him, as he was innocent and had only acted in self-defence; but the merciful God prevented him from speaking, and shut the eyes of his adversaries so that they could not see him.