“I do not say that there is any need for my teaching or warning the many princes before me, but the duty I owe to _my_ Germany will not allow me to recant. With these words I commend myself to your most serene Majesty and to your principalities, and humbly beg that you will not permit my accusers to triumph over me causelessly. I have spoken (_Dixi_).” Luther had spoken in Latin; he was asked to repeat what he had said in German. The Hall had been packed; the torches gave forth warmth as well as light. Luther steamed with perspiration, and looked wan and overpowered; the heat was intense. Friends thought that the further effort would be too much for his strength. The Saxon councillor, Frederick von Thun, regardless of etiquette, called out loudly, “If you cannot do it you have done enough, Herr Doctor.”(259) But Luther went on and finished his address in German. His last words were. “Here I stand (_Hic bin Ich_).” Aleander, the papal nuncio, who was not present, relates that while Luther was speaking of the books in which he had attacked the Papacy, and was proceeding “with great venom” to denounce the Pope,(260) the Emperor ordered him to pass from that subject and to proceed with his other matters. The Emperor had certainly told the Estates that he would not allow the question of Luther’s orthodoxy and complaints against the Holy See to be discussed together; and that lends some support to Aleander’s statement.(261) But when it is seen that not one of the dozen deputies present who write accounts of the scene mentions the interruption; when it is not found in the official report; when it is remembered that Charles could not understand either German or Latin, the story of the interruption is a very unlikely one. Aleander was not remarkable for his veracity—“a man, to say the least, not bigotedly truthful (_non superstitiose verax_)” says Erasmus;(262) and the nuncio on one occasion boasted to his masters in Rome that he could lie well when occasion required it.(263)