310 Prowe's Life of Copernicus. Oct.
He was thirty-two years of age, but his pursuits had hitherto been exclusively those of a student. The time had at length come for using the materials so carefully and copiously accumulated. His work in the world was about to begin.
He seems to have plunged straightway into the agitated politics of his native land. Long-forgotten records of the proceedings of certain local assemblages in the autumn months of 1505 and 1506 have given up his name as that of one sharing in their deliberations. But physicians were scarcer than politicians in those remote regions, and his uncle claimed both his services and his society. By a resolution of the Chapter, dated January 7, 1507, he was appointed permanent medical attendant on the bishop, and had already, it is tolerably certain, taken up his quarters at the episcopal residence.
The Castle of Heilsberg, still one of the most imposing relics of feudal times, was situated about forty-six miles from the cathedral-town of Frauenburg, in the heart of the diocese of Ermland. The undulating country by which it was surrounded was then richly wooded with oak and beech ; from the battlements the eye commanded a view of extensive forests varied by frequent sheets of standing water ; while the rivers Alle and Simser, which united to encompass the building with a kind of natural moat, cut their way between pleasant pastures, blue-green patches of flax, and fields waving with barley, rye, and oats. The lowering front of the walls, however, somewhat belied the peaceful aspect of their environment. And in truth the normal condition of the country was one of peril and disturbance.
The gloomy suggestions of the exterior were, however, replaced within by impressions of a totally different character. The fortress was transformed, as the grand entrance was left behind, into the palace of a mediæval prince. The open square, round which the edifice was built, was continually thronged with a motley crowd of ecclesiastics, pages, serving-men, jugglers, rope-dancers, bear-leaders ; its graceful Gothic arcades echoed the songs of wandering minstrels, the shrill jest of the court-fool, the stem command of the majordomo ; envoys hurried through it, big with important missions from the Court of Cracow, or the Chapter-house of Königsberg; vaivodes, castellans, burgomasters, deputies from the Prussian States, grave prebendaries dismounting from their palfreys, messengers spurring from the scene of the latest frontier-outrage, jostled with young noblemen in waiting, the lounging favourites of society, and with mendicants expecting their dole, its shrinking outcasts.
