Court of Love to decide the case.

This met with noisy approval, and albeit I and my dear Hans, and some
others with us, made protest, the damsels were presently seated in a
circle and Jorg Loffelholz, who was chosen to preside, asked of each to
pronounce sentence. Thus it came to the turn of Ursula Tetzel and she,
looking round on Junker Henning or ever she spoke, said, with a proud
curl of her red lips, that she could give no opinion, inasmuch as she
only knew what beseemed young maids of noble birth.

On this the Junker answered with such high and grave dignity as I should
not have looked for in so scatter-brained a wight: "The best patent of
nobility, fair lady, is that of the maid to whom God Almighty has
vouchsafed the gentlest soul and sweetest grace; and in all this assembly
I have found none more richly endowed with both than the damsel against
whom I in jest have made complaint. Wherefor I pray the presiding judge
of this Court of Love to ask you once more for your verdict."

Ursula found this ill to brook; nevertheless her high spirit was ready to
meet it. She laughed loudly, and with seeming lightness, as she hastily
answered him: "Then you haughty lords of the marches allow not that it is
in the Emperor's power to grant letters of nobility, but ascribe it to
Heaven alone! A bold opinion. Howbeit, I care not for politics, and
will pronounce my sentence. If it had been Margery Schopper, who had
refused the kiss, or Elsa Ebner, or any one of us whose ancestors bore
arms by grace of the Emperor, and not of the God of the Brandenburgers,
I would have condemned her to give you, in lieu of one kiss, two, in the
presence of witnesses; but inasmuch as it is Mistress Ann Spiesz who has
dared to withhold from a noble gentleman, a guest of the town, what we
highborn damsels would readily have paid I grant her of our mercy, grace