"Well, if it come to the trial of the sword, as come it must," said the cavalier, "say to your master that Agostino Sarelli has a band of one hundred tried men and an impregnable fastness in the mountains, where he may take refuge, and where they will gladly hear the Word of God from pure lips. They call us robbers,--us who have gone out from the assembly of robbers, that we might lead honest and cleanly lives. There is not one among us that hath not lost houses, lands, brothers, parents, children, or friends, through their treacherous cruelty. There be those whose wives and sisters have been forced into the Borgia harem; there be those whose children have been tortured before their eyes,--those who have seen the fairest and dearest slaughtered by these hell-hounds, who yet sit in the seat of the Lord and give decrees in the name of Christ. Is there a God? If there be, why is He silent?" "Yea, my son, there is a God," said the monk; "but His ways are not as ours. A thousand years in His sight are but as yesterday, as a watch in the night. He shall come, and shall not keep silence." "Perhaps you do not know, father," said the young man, "that I, too, am excommunicated. I am excommunicated, because, Caesar Borgia having killed my oldest brother, and dishonored and slain my sister, and seized on all our possessions, and the Pope having protected and confirmed him therein, I declare the Pope to be not of God, but of the Devil. I will not submit to him, nor be ruled by him; and I and my fellows will make good our mountains against him and his crew with such right arms as the good Lord hath given us." "The Lord be with you, my son!" said the monk; "and the Lord bring His Church out of these deep waters! Surely, it is a lovely and beautiful Church, made dear and precious by innumerable saints and martyrs who have given their sweet lives up willingly for it; and it is full of records of righteousness, of prayers and alms and works of mercy that have made even the very dust of our Italy precious and holy. Why hast Thou abandoned this vine of Thy planting, O Lord? The boar out of the wood doth waste it; the wild beast of the field doth devour it. Return, we beseech Thee, and visit this vine of Thy planting!" The monk clasped his hands and looked upward pleadingly, the tears running down his wasted cheeks. Ah, many such strivings and prayers in those days went up from silent hearts in obscure solitudes, that wrestled and groaned under that mighty burden which Luther at last received strength to heave from the heart of the Church. "Then, father, you do admit that one may be banned by the Pope, and may utterly refuse and disown him, and yet be a Christian?"