. . did not immediately fix the badge which he
had received to his garment, as the matter is, lest his wife, who
loved him with the most tender affection, seeing this, should be
anxious and disturbed, . . . but she found it while turning over his
purse, and fainted, struck down with a wonderful consternation.'
P. 90. 'I must be gone.' Cf. Lib. IV. section 2. A chapter in
which Dietrich rises into a truly noble and pathetic strain.
'Coming to Schmalcald,' he says, 'Lewis found his dearest friends,
whom he had ordered to meet him there, not wishing to depart without
taking leave of them.'
Then follows Dietrich's only poetic attempt, which Basnage calls a
'carmen ineptum, foolish ballad,' and most unfairly, as all readers
should say, if I had any hope of doing justice in a translation to
this genial fragment of an old dramatic ballad, and its simple
objectivity, as of a writer so impressed (like all true Teutonic
poets in those earnest days) with the pathos and greatness of his
subject that he never tries to 'improve' it by reflections and
preaching at his readers, but thinks it enough just to tell his
story, sure that it will speak for itself to all hearts:--
Quibus valefaciens cum moerore
Commisit suis fratribus natos cum uxore:
Matremque deosculatos filiali more,
Vix eam alloquitur cordis prae dolore,
Illis mota viscera, corda tremuerunt,
Dum alter in alterius colla irruerunt,
Expetentes oscula, quae vix receperunt
Propter multitudines, quae eos compresserunt.
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