This promise flowed from Wolf’s lips with such joyous confidence that the grave musician’s sombre face brightened; but it swiftly darkened again, and he exclaimed, “We don’t give such hasty work!” When the knight tried to tell him what he had in mind, the other brusquely interrupted with the request that he would first aid him in a more important matter.  Wolf was acquainted with the city, and perhaps would spare him a walk by informing him where the sick lads would find the best shelter.  The Stag was overcrowded, and he was reluctant to leave the poor fellows in the little sleeping room which they shared with their companions.  The Ratisbon physician had ordered them to be sent to the hospital; but the boy from Cologne opposed it so impetuously that he, Appenzelder, thought it his duty to seek another shelter for the sufferers.

When Wolf with the older man entered the low, close chamber, he found the lad, a handsome, vigorous boy, with his fair, curling hair tossed in disorder around his fevered face, standing erect in his bed.  While the doctor was trying to compel him to obey and enter the litter which stood waiting for him, he beat him back with his strong young fists.  He would rather jump into the open grave or into the rushing river, he shrieked to the corpulent leech, than be dragged into the hospital, which was the plague, death, hell.

He emphasized his resistance with heavy blows, while his Italian companion in suffering, livid, ashen-gray, with bowed head and closed lids, permitted himself to be placed in the litter without moving.

At Wolf’s entrance the German youth, like a drowning man who sees a friend on the shore, shrieked an entreaty to save him from the murderers who wanted to drag him to death.  The young knight gazed compassionately at the lad’s flushed face, and, after a brief pause of reflection, proposed committing the sufferers to the care of the Knights Hospitallers.

This removed the burden from the young Rhinelander’s tortured soul, yet he insisted, with passionate impetuosity, upon having his master and the nobleman accompany him, that the physician whom, in his fevered fancy, he regarded as his mortal foe, should not drag him to the pest-house after all.

Both musicians yielded to his wish.  On the way Appenzelder held the lad’s burning hand in his own, and never wearied of talking affectionately to him.  Not until after he had seen his charges, with the physician’s assistance, comfortably lodged, and had left the house of the Hospitallers, did he permit himself to test the almost incredible news which Sir Wolf Hartschwert had brought him.

With what fiery zeal Wolf persuaded him, how convincing was his assurance that a substitute for Johann of Cologne, and a most admirable one, was actually to be found here in Ratisbon!

He had no need to seek for fitting words in the description of Barbara Blomberg, the melody of her voice, and her admirable training.  The fact that she was a woman, he protested, need not be considered, nay, it might be kept secret.  The Church, it is true, prohibited the assistance of women, but the matter here was simply the execution of songs in a private house.