I wish I could employ more time in reading, and could expend some of that money on learned men which I must throw away on so many illiterate knights." One cold morning at Metz, in the year 1288, he walked out dressed as usual in the plainest garb.

He strolled into a baker's shop, as if to warm himself.

The baker's termagant wife said to him, all unconscious who he was, "Soldiers have no business to come into poor women's houses." "True," the emperor replied, "but do not be angry, my good woman; I am an old soldier who have spent all my fortune in the service of that rascal Rhodolph, and he suffers me to want, notwithstanding all his fine promises." "Good enough for you," said the woman; "a man who will serve such a fellow, who is laying waste the whole earth, deserves nothing better." She then, in her spite, threw a pail of water on the fire, which, filling the room with smoke and ashes, drove the emperor into the street.
Rhodolph, having returned to his lodgings, sent a rich present to the old woman, from the emperor who had warmed himself at her fire that morning, and at the dinner-table told the story with great glee to his companions.

The woman, terrified, hastened to the emperor to implore mercy.

He ordered her to be admitted to the dining-room, and promised to forgive her if she would repeat to the company all her abusive epithets, not omitting one.