quick southern blood." The theologizing physician would willingly have followed up this newly discovered idea, but the father's curiosity interrupted him with the question:
"Where does the Magister come from, and how does he keep himself?"
"He comes from Heidelberg, a German town on the Rhine;[1] his name is Schwarz, but, like all the learned men of the day, he has Latinized it. He does not like to talk of his early life; but in an hour of sadness he once confided to me that in the war which has now lasted full thirty years his native town was plundered and laid in ashes by the Imperial troops. He was fortunate enough to save the manuscripts taken from the University library to Rome that belonged to him; he fled with them, and remained deserted here. He had not crossed the boundaries of his native town twice in his life; in Attica, or Latium, he knew every house and every road; but here he did not know his way out or in. He joined a company of exiles and came here, where he has now lived for six-and-twenty years. The Heidelberg Library bought back his manuscripts, which he had enriched with valuable comments. Besides, he undertakes corrections for Gerhard Vossius, his countryman, and for others. The best emendations in the ancient classics are his, and no one knows them to be so; but that does not trouble him. It
- ↑ So in the original; it is on the Neckar.—Transl. note.
