The pages waited at the top of the stairs, listening for the bursts of merriment which were the usual accompaniments of the jesters drinking bouts; but all was silent as the grave. At last they grew uneasy and crept below in a huddled group. The fool lay quite still, submerged beneath the flood. He had been drowned in the wine.
The joke now seemed a sorry one, but the pages consoled themselves with the thought that, after all, death had come to the jester in a welcome guise.
There is a legend connected with the town of Speyer in which poetic justice is meted out to the principal characters, although not until after they have died.
The tale concerns itself with the fate of the unfortunate monarch Henry IV. History relates that Henry was entirely unfit to wear the ermine, but weak as he was, and ignominious as was his reign, it was a bitter blow that his own son was foremost among his enemies. At first the younger Henry conspired against his father in secret; outwardly he was a model of filial affection, so that he readily prevailed upon the weak monarch to appoint him as his successor. After that, however, he openly joined himself to his fathers foes; and when the Pope excommunicated the monarch, gradually the Emperors following went over to the side of his son, who then caused himself to be invested with imperial honours. The deposed sovereign, deprived of power and supporters, was compelled to go into exile; even his personal freedom was secured only as the price of his renunciation of the crown. Broken and humiliated, feeling intensely the disgrace of his position, he determined to undertake a pilgrimage to Liége, accompanied only by his servant Kurt, who alone of all his train had remained faithful to him. The pilgrimage was successfully accomplished, but ere he could enter upon the return journey the wretched Emperor died, in want and misery, utterly neglected by his kindred. Even after death the Popes ban was effective, so that his corpse was not allowed interment for several years. During that period the faithful Kurt kept guard unceasingly over his masters coffin and would not suffer himself to be drawn therefrom.
At length, however, Henry V, under pressure from his princes and nobles, gave orders that his fathers remains be conveyed to Speyer and there interred in the royal vault with such honours as befitted the obsequies of a monarch. The messengers found old Kurt still holding his vigil beside the Emperors body, and in recognition of his faithfulness he was permitted to follow the funeral cortege to Speyer. There were in the town certain good and pious folk who were touched by the servants devotion, and by these he was kindly treated. But all their kindness and attention could not repair the havoc which his weary vigil and long privations had wrought on his health, and a few months later he followed his master to the grave.