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Updated: May 12, 2025
By the morrow's morn there shall not be one of you in your beds aye, and those whose heads are rolled in the dust shall count yourselves the fortunate ones. For they at least will escape the fate of poor Hans Pulitz." Now sorely do I wonder, at this distance of time, that they did not slay me in good earnest.
For, in the presence of the Duke, I cried out against the horror. But being no more than a boy, I was stricken to silence by the hand of a man-at-arms. Then I saw Hans Pulitz cast loose. I saw him seized by one man even by the Red Axe raised high in the air, and flung over the barriers among the ravening and leaping blood-hounds.
What can you do to me in the Inn of the Swan that can equal the end of poor Hans Pulitz of whom they found neither bone nor hair, took up no fragment of skin or nail, save the golden chain only, tooth-scarred and beslavered, which he wore about his waist. And the belt you may see for yourselves any day if you give me your company within the Red Tower."
And they say that the belt of gold was all that was ever seen again of the poor rascal. Hans Pulitz who had hoped for so many riotous evenings among the Fat Pigs of Thorn and so many draughts of the slippery wine of the Rheingan careering down the poor thirsty throat of him.
But, alas for Hans Pulitz! the end of all imagining was no more than five minutes of snapping, snarling, horrible Pandemonium in the kennels of the Wolfsberg, and the scored gold chain on the ground was all that remained to tell his tale. Verily, there were few Achans in Duke Casimir's camp.
"But what have we here?" they cried, when they came upon me, bound and helpless, with the bandage only half pushed off my eyes. "Heave him up on his pins, and let us look at him," quoth a burly guardsman. "I trust he is no one of any account. I want not to see another such job done on a poor scheming knave like that last, when the Duke Casimir settled accounts with Hans Pulitz!"
Would you know what happened? I will tell you briefly: "Ten men, accounted strong, held Hans Pulitz. Ten men could scarce lead him through the court-yard to the chair on which sat Duke Casimir. I saw him judged. Was he not of the White Wolf? Did the White Wolf save him? Have her teeth ravened for those that condemned him?
You yourself shall die, as has been appointed. For none may speak lightly of the White Wolf and live to tell the tale!" "So be it," I replied, calmly; "but first let me recount to you the story of Hans Pulitz. Not for the hiding of a belt of gold, as men say, was he condemned. But because he had plotted against the life of the Duke and of his minister of justice, the Red Axe.
For the fear of the Duke and the Duke's dog-kennels was upon every stout fighting-kerl. They minded the fate of Hans Pulitz, who had kept back a belt of gold, and had gotten himself flung by the heels with no more than the stolen belt upon him, into the kennels where the Duke's blood-hounds howled and clambered with their fore-feet on the black-spattered barriers.
"Nay, my friends," said I, "it was because of the death of Hans Pulitz and that of others that I would strengthen the hands of liberty and make an end of tyranny. But not, an' it please you, with child's plays and the cast-off garmentry of tyrants.
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