Note 279 — XXII
Reading edition
Schaab says that an aristocratic appointment at the court procured this nobleman a comfortable life. Voluntarily he followed the princely court, where he had a free table and fodder for his horses. Even for his dress he received cloth in the court colors, and generally wore a kind of mantle, called Tabard. It was in accordance with the morals of that time to carouse at court. They went there with empty cups and returned with full ones. The princes tried not before the sixteenth century to put a check to this excess by special orders. The elector Johan Schweikard von Kronenberg ordered, even in the year 1605, to leave the grossen Saumagen—this was the name of the cups then used—for the future at home . . . . However comfortable and German-like all this may look, miserable were these court-wages, this dress, these alms presented to the inventor of typography. But no, it is perfectly in harmony with the general course of earthly things. Van der Linde, Haarlem Legend, p. 29.