“You learned gentlemen will keep your formulas of logic for the schools,” commanded the narrator. “We are less fortunate and only understand plain German. As I said, the two thrust back and forth for a long time, Caïetanus crying ‘recant,’ and Luther retorting he meant no undutifulness, but he must be shown that what he was to recant was against the teachings of Scripture. At last the Cardinal lost temper and told him, ‘Recant to-day, or will-you, nill-you, just for this one point, I’ll condemn all your theses.’ So off goes Dr. Luther to take counsel with his friends, and on the next day and the next tries to get the Cardinal to reason fairly with him; but it is all Papal Bulls and Decretals and Thomas Aquinas on one side, and Holy Scripture on the other. And at last the Cardinal just said over and over, like a jackdaw, ‘Recant, recant, recant,’--not because Dr. Luther was proved wrong, but because Rome had spoken. And at last the Cardinal called out, ‘Recant or never come again before my eyes.’ And forth Dr. Luther goes.” “Honest man!” chorused twenty. “He stayed in Augsburg a few days more, and then filed a protest against the decision of a ‘Pope ill-informed, to a Pope better informed.’ And finally, feeling that despite safe conducts strange things sometimes happened when a Papal legate was close, he left Augsburg very suddenly, and is now, I trust, safe back in Wittenberg--God bless him!” “God bless him!” rang from ritter and tapster; and a tall, lean lanz-knecht captain with a scarred face, a great flail of a sword, and a wonderful party-colored dress, one hose red, the other green, leaped upon the table, flourishing a mighty beaker. “Hear you, gentlemen, burghers, and good folk all, you know we soldiers always drink damnation to the Turk. But where dwells the Turk now? At Constantinople?” “No! No!” stormed everybody. “_The Turk is at Rome, his name is Leo!_ Now drink with me a new oath, or walk up my sword’s length if you won’t. ‘Life and fortune to the friar of Wittenberg, and damnato the Pope!’” “Damnation to the Pope!” I suppose I drank it with the rest. Certainly the valorous captain had no need to execute his threat on any one. A scene of fierce drinking, oath-taking, and interchange of pledges followed. A good many perfect strangers drank “bruderschaft” then and there. If it had been desired, fifty good fighting men could have been enlisted around that tavern to defend Dr. Luther. The next day at Nördlingen I ran into a scene almost similar. And I repeated to myself what I had said to Marianna. “We Germans will not suffer our friar to be banned and burned by your Italian Pope.” Great was Luther, but I think in nothing greater than this, that by simply doing the duty that came to hand, and being true to himself and the light which led him,--he, the peasant’s son, became the hero alike of the mighty and the lowly among the German people.