On that eve of Saints Simon and Jude she appeared in the joyous splendour of her youth and as she elegantly slipped smiling through the winding movements of the round dance in the glare of lights and torches, there was not a single eye that did not follow the most beauteous child in Nuremberg with joy and pride. I think that even those old men standing there and waiting in such deadly earnest spared a glance and a word for that fair maiden. But the hour has come that Christoph Leininger has already discussed with the council and he has been as good as his word. Suddenly, with the general merriment at its height, there has been a great shock, a flaring up, a trembling has descended on the feast. A more undisciplined noise has added itself to the brass and wind sections of the band. People have cried out in the streets. Before anyone realised, the red glow from the vanquished citadel came through the windows and over the pale with fear faces of the guests of Nuremberg's honourable council. Those in the know, the veterans, sprang up from their seats and cried "Victory!" and "Freedom!" The swords of young men flashed above the wreathed heads of young women and all the town's bells sounded the alarm and the call to arms waking both children and the sick. Men ran out into the streets with their weapons to help the council and Christoph Leininger to win this dangerous game. The feast and the dance in the town hall then came to an end it has to be admitted, but another wilder feast and dance began. Those burgers who, in their mocking and disdainful way, had stooped to spoiling and offending the people's joy, were thrown to the floor in the middle of the council chamber and disarmed. They might well have cried out "Treachery!" but the town would rightfully rejoice when the townsfolk learned just what, on this night, that roll of the dice had been for. Only a few years later Baron Friedrich, who became the first Elector of Brandenburg sold the burnt-out ruin of the citadel of Nuremberg complete with all accessories lock, stock and barrel and all rights included to the Forest of Sebald and Lorenz reserving to himself only the right of asylum and escort and the free movement of his subjects. And thus no-one could show a greater right to the happiness of that night in Nuremberg than Nuremberg itself and the Emperor. But I will say no more of that, only that on that very same night of the feast of Saints Simon and Jude along with Christopher of Leiningen another knight, who had gone missing, climbed over the wall, sword in hand, to do great service to the town as he had promised: my dear friend and brother Michael Groland of Laufenholz, the wild squire Groland, for whom our neighbour's beautiful daughter had been waiting in that little garden since they had played together as children!