Francis did not forgive him his victory, and for the next quarter of a century--until 1544--Europe resounded with the rival cries of the two monarchs, unhappy Italy being usually the actual scene of battle. At Pavia in 1525 Francis had to say “All is lost save honour”--the precise definition of “honour” in Francis’s mind being something very different from what it is to-day. Francis was captured and haled to Madrid to meet his grim conqueror, who kept him in prison until he consented to marry Charles’s favourite sister Eleanor of Austria, and to join with him in an alliance against the heretics. This Eleanor was a gentle and beautiful lady whom Charles treated with true brotherly contempt; yet she loved him. As soon as Francis was out of prison he forgot that he was married, and made love to every pretty girl that came his way. Francis being safely out of the way, Charles turned to the great aim of his life--to reconcile Protestants with Catholics throughout his colossal Empire. He was a strong Catholic, and displayed immense energy in the reconciliation. According to Gibbon, who quotes the learned Grotius,[6] he burned 100,000 Netherlanders, and Gibbon dolefully remarks that this one Holy Roman Emperor slew more Christians than all the pagan Roman Emperors put together. Charles appears to have grown gradually into the habit of persecution; he began comparatively mildly, and it was not till 1550 that he began to see that there was really nothing else to do with these dull and obstinate Lutherans but to burn them. He could not understand it. He was sure he was right, and yet the more Netherlanders he burned the fewer seemed to attend mass. Moreover, it was impossible to believe that those things the miscreant Luther had said about the immoral conduct of the monks could be true; once upon a time he had met the fellow, and had him in his power; why had he not burned him once and for all and saved the world from this miserable holocaust which had now become necessary through the man’s pestilential teaching? So Charles went on with his conciliation, driven by conscience--the most terrible spur that can be applied to the flanks of a righteous man. No doubt Torquemada acted from conscience, and Robespierre; possibly even Nero could have raked up some sort of a conscientious motive for all he did--the love of pure art, perhaps. “_Qualis artifex pereo!_” said he in one of those terse untranslatable Latin phrases when he was summoning up his courage to fall upon his sword in the high Roman manner; surely there spoke the artist: “How artistically I die!”