"You, perhaps, would think it the highest felicity to die among the brethren. In fact not only you but almost everyone is deceived and imposed upon by this notion that Christ and true piety are to be found in certain places, in dress, in food, in prescribed ceremonies. We fancy a man is ruined, if he put on a black gown instead of a white one, if he change a cowl for a hat, if he from time to time change his residence. But I dare say the opposite, that great injury to Christian piety has come from those so-called 'religious' acts, although they were, perhaps, first introduced with a pious purpose. Gradually they have increased and broken up into six thousand diversities. The approval of the supreme pontiffs has been given to them, but in many ways quite too easily and indulgently; for what is more corrupt and impious than those loose religious practices? Why, if you speak only of praiseworthy, even of the most praiseworthy ones, I know not what image of Christ you will find in them beyond certain chilling and Judaising ceremonies. By these things they please themselves and condemn others,--although it is the teaching of Christ that all the world is as one great house, or as it were one monastery, and all men are its canons and its brethren; that the sacrament of baptism is the supreme act of religion and that we are to consider, not _where_ we live, but _how_ we live." He justifies his wandering life by the good character he has everywhere maintained. "If I am not approved by everyone--a thing I do not strive for--surely I am in good standing with the chief men at Rome. There was not a cardinal who did not receive me as a brother, though I had no such ambition for myself, especially the cardinal of St. George, the cardinal of Bologna, cardinal Grimani, the cardinal of Fornovo [?], and he who is now supreme pontiff, to say nothing of archdeacons and men of learning; and this honour was paid, not to wealth, which I neither have nor desire, nor to ambition, to which I was ever a stranger, but to letters alone, which our countrymen laugh at, but the Italians worship.