Many of the names which fell from the moist lips of the gentlemen outside--Lucian and Virgil, Ovid and Seneca, Homer and Plato--were perfectly familiar to him.

The words the little doctor was reading must belong to their writings.

How attentively the others listened! Had not Dietel run away from the monks' school at Fulda he, too, might have enjoyed the witticisms of these sages, or even been permitted to sit at the same table with the great lights of the Church from Cologne.
Now it was all over with studying.
And yet--it could not be so very serious a matter, for Doctor Eberbach had just read something aloud at which the young Nuremberg ambassador, Lienhard Groland, could not help laughing heartily.

It seemed to amuse the others wonderfully, too, and even caused the astute Dr.Peutinger to strike his clinched fist upon the table with the exclamation, "A devil of a fellow!" and Wilibald Pirckheimer to assent eagerly, praising Hutten's ardent love for his native land and courage in battling for its elevation; but this Hutten whom he so lauded was the ill-advised scion of the knightly race that occupied Castle Steckelberg in his Hessian home, whom he knew well.

The state of his purse was evident from the fact that the landlord of The Pike had once been obliged to detain him because he could not pay the bill--though it was by no means large--in any other coin than merry tales.
But even the best joke of the witty knight would have failed to produce its effect on the listening waiter just now; for the gentlemen outside were again discussing the Reuchlin controversy, and in doing so uttered such odious words about the Cologne theologians, whom Dietel knew as godly gentlemen who consumed an ample supply of food, that he grew hot and cold by turns.