For several days he was to be seen insolently strolling beside the fallen maiden, braving the Rector's tedious sermonizing; he seemed to have developed an appetite for this mocking and fickle siren. Nevertheless, hardly a week passed before he threw himself once more into his books. He was blamed for abandoning the girl so soom, after having lightheartedly compromise for her sake his chance for the honors of cum laude throughout a whole term. Furthermore, his comparative indifference to women made people suspect him of commerce with a succubus.
Wines from the Rhine and Hungary and France had already been served. jacqueline unhooked her bodice, of cloth of silver, and ordered her younger son to be brought to her; he was not yet weaned, she said gaily, and was thirsty like the rest of the company. Henry Justus and his wife loved to exhibit this new child, who made them feel young themselves.
One night in February, just before a cold dawn, Simon mounted to the chamber where Hilzonda lay straight and motionless in her bed, lighted by a faint night lamp. He spoke to her in a low voice and, after making certain that she was not asleep, sat down heavily on the foot of the bed to tell her of the meeting in the small room below, talking as a merchant does with his wife in going over the reckonings of the day. Was she not weary, too, of living in one of these cities where money, flesh, and vanity parade absurdly in the public square, where men's toil seems to be solidified into brick and stone, or useless clutter, on which the Spirit no longer breathes? As for himself, he was proposing to abandon his house and possessions in Amsterdam, or rather, to tell them (for why should one squander holdings which rightly belong to God?), in order to go, while there was still time, to settle in the Ark which Munster had become. That city was already full to bursting, but their friend Rottmann would be able to find them a roof and provisions. Simon was giving Hilzonda a sibly death, awaited them there, but they had also the chance to be among the first to welcome the Reign of Heaven.
The couple had only one son, Sigismund, who had embarked at the age of sixteen with Gonzalo Pizarro for Peru, where the banker had large sums invested. They had given up hope of seeing him again, since things had taken a bad turn in Lima in recent years. A daughter, still quite young, had softened that loss for them; Salome used to tell gaily about this belated pregnancy, attributed by her in part to prayer at Novenas, and in part to the effect of a caper sauce! This child was almost the same age as Martha; the two cousins shared the same bed and the same toys, the same salutary spankings, and, later on, the same singing lessons and adornments.