The cantor house was only a few steps from the Red Cock, and Wolf knew every stone in the street, which was named for the tavern.

Yet that very circumstance delayed him, for even the smallest trifle which had changed during his absence attracted his attention.
He had already noticed at the familiar inn that the gay image of the Madonna and Cluld, and the little lamp above, were no longer there.

The pictures of the saints had been removed from the public rooms, and even the painting which had been impressed upon his memory from boyhood--like a sign of the house--had vanished.

A large red cock, crowing with wide-open beak at the Apostle Peter, had been there.
This venerable work of an old artist ought to have been retained, no matter what doctrine the Leitgebs now professed.

Its disappearance affected the knight unpleasantly.
It also induced him to see whether the Madonna with the swords in her heart, which, at the time of his departure, had adorned the Ark, the great house at the corner of the Haidplatz, had met with the same fate, and this sacred witness of former days had likewise been sacrificed to the iconoclasm of the followers of the new Protestant faith.