Next we are presented with the German impersonation of Satan as a
wise old magician, only with claws instead of feet, commissioning his
three captains (hauptleutern), Furwitz, Umfallo, and Neidelhard, to
beset and ruin Theurdank. They are interpreted as the dangers of
youth, middle life, and old age--Rashness, Disaster, and Distress (or
Envy). One at a time they encounter him,--not once, but again and
again; and he has ranged under each head, in entire contempt of real
order of time, the perils he thinks owing to each foe. Furwitz most
justly gets the credit of Maximilian's perils on the steeple of Ulm,
though, unfortunately, the artist has represented the daring climber
as standing not much above the shoulders of Furwitz and Ehrenhold;
and although the annotation tells us that his "hinder half foot"
overhung the scaffold, the danger in the print is not appalling.
Furwitz likewise inveigles him into putting the point (schnabel) of
his shoe into the wheel of a mill for turning stone balls, where he
certainly hardly deserved to lose nothing but the beak of his shoe.
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