“Why has my life become thus blended with the Augustinian friar of Wittenberg? Why do I feel that for woe or for weal his destiny and my own have become as one? At his summons I have been transported from Italy to the Harzland. At the news of his going to Leipzig I hasten there also. And wherefore--O Moritz? We have talked this matter full often, I know, sitting before the roaring logs by the great fireplace in the Regenstein. And my answer came not then. It does not come now. Only I am become more certain than ever that in following Martin Luther I am following the high destiny not of wide Germany merely (daily I grow more convinced of that), but likewise my own. Do I attain to the mountain summit with the dawn, or the black precipice and the deadly chaos beyond? I cannot answer. I can only follow my guide. “I have had no words with him as yet. He has been too busy with the theologians, friendly and hostile. I reached this busy, stately Saxon city in its hot plain beside the winding Pleisse several days before him. Already the place swarmed with visitors from distant parts of Germany; not fur-gowned _Magistri Theologiae_ simply, but intelligent merchants, the better class of monks and friars, and not a few noblemen like myself, as well as a horde of itinerant scholars and alleged students. Duke George the local prince is a bluff, honest-hearted ruler, whose mind I fear has been prejudiced against Luther by the fanatically minded professors of the local university, but who through all has striven to give fair play. I was offered hospitality at the ducal schloss, the lofty towered Pleissenburg; but I preferred the greater freedom of comfortable quarters at the Erbprinz, which rejoices in a very clean and friendly landlord. “Sometimes I wonder what future generations will think of us; whether they will imagine that all Germans of the summer of this 1519 were wholly given over to the quips and small coin of theology. Indeed, it has been passing marvellous to hear the learned debates on ‘Release from Purgatory,’ or ‘The Authority of Papal Bulls,’ which are bandied about almost by cobblers and tapsters. For the matter is far beyond any small question of castigating poor Tetzel now. ‘The fountains of the great deep are broken up’ even as I heard an angry monk protesting; it is no longer a matter of mere indulgences: everything ecclesiastical down to the nicest questions of Papal prerogative has been cast into the hopper of debate. But I am rambling: let me particularize in greater order.