Most painful to Luther, in his last moments, was the controversy forced upon him by the defection of so dear a friend as Agricola, the leader of the Antinomians. He had long before that expressed his “astoundment” at the secession of Œcolampadius and Regius, and other intimate associates. “Why should I fret and fume against the papists?” he wrote in 1531: “all they have done against me has been in fair, open war; we are declared enemies, and act as such. They who hurt me are my own dear children. My brothers, _fraterculi mei, aurei amiculi mei_.... I thought I had gone through, had exhausted all the adversities the evil one could inflict; but it was not so. My Absalom, the child of my heart, had not deserted his father, had not poured out ignominy upon David; my Judas, the traitor who delivered up his master, had not sold me: he has done so now.” If Mary Stuart had any quarter to which, in her disastrous condition, she might look for love and favour, it was, says the most popular of historians of Scotland, her brother Murray. _His_ kindness and compassion she deserved, after loading him with favours, as well as pardoning him considerable offences. But his acceptance of the regency broke all remaining ties of tenderness betwixt him and his sister. Scott is not romancing when, in an historical romance, he describes her reception of the news. “The queen gave a sort of shriek, and clapping her hands together, exclaimed, ‘Comes the arrow out of his quiver?—out of my brother’s bow?’” When Elizabeth appointed commissioners to inquire into Mary’s case, the Regent Murray appeared before them, “in the odious character of the accuser of his sister, benefactress, and sovereign.” To adopt the sentiment of the most sententious of stage moralists, When ingratitude barbs the dart of injury, the wound has double danger in it. What touched Cortez most nearly, at the time of the expulsion from Mexico, was to find the name of his trusted friend, his _intimado_, his _privado_, the secretary Duero, at the head of the paper of remonstrance presented by his disaffected soldiers. We find Louis XVI., on the eve of his execution, inquiring with calm curiosity, and as though not personally affected, how certain members of the convention whom he knew had voted at his trial. Told that his cousin of Orleans had voted for his death, “Ah!” he exclaimed to Malesherbes, “that affects me more than all the rest.” It was, remarks Lamartine, the comment of Cæsar when he recognised the face of Brutus amongst his murderers; he alone roused him to speak. So spake the captain of Plymouth, but with more of anger in his sorrow, in the New England hexameters devoted by Longfellow to Miles Standish, when he charged John Alder with having supplanted, defrauded, betrayed him:—