But his mad fury
changed to as mad a benevolence, and he managed to make a jest of his
gratuity. Puchnik was led into the royal treasury, and the emperor
himself, thrusting his royal hands into his hoards of gold, filled the
pockets, and even the boots, of the late sufferer with the precious
coin. This done, Puchnik attempted to depart, but in vain. He found
himself nailed to the floor, so weighed down with gold that he was
unable to stir. Before he could move he had to disgorge much of his
new-gained wealth, a proceeding to which churchmen in that age do not
seem to have been greatly given. Doubtless the remorseful Wenceslas
beheld this process with a grim smile of royal humor on his lips.
The emperor had a brother, Sigismund by name, a man not of any high
degree of wisdom, but devoid of his wild and immoderate temper.
Brandenburg was his inheritance, though he had married the daughter of
the King of Hungary and Poland, and hoped to succeed to those countries.
There was a third brother, John, surnamed "Von Goerlitz." Sigismund was
by no means blind to his brother's folly, or to the ruin in which it
threatened to involve his family and his own future prospects.
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