I wrote thus to Moritz, an honest friend, but one who dwelled much on the surface of the water. I could not bring myself to write him all that had passed at Leipzig since my coming. Afterwards I heard that, despite the very cold civility which the city magistrates and Duke George had given Dr. Luther, many a candid man who had gone to the disputation friendly to Eck, came away admiring his champion’s lungs and adroitness, yet in his heart of hearts wishing well to Luther and his daring gospel. But I confess towards the close of the disputation I was thinking less and less of what the world would say of the Wittenberg friar, and more and more of what I ought to say myself. For if Dr. Luther’s gospel meant anything, it meant that I, Walter von Regenstein, had a duty towards God and man which I could neither cast upon the Church, nor annihilate by the conventionalities of pagan philosophy. For be it remembered, despite my candid endeavor now to play the German, my education was that of a child of Italy--of the Italy of the wonderful close of the wonderful fifteenth century; and almost with my nurse’s milk I had been taught a doctrine that will sound strange to my pious grandchildren, nurtured in the spirit of our glorious North German Reformation. “Assent with lips to the teachings of the Church,” spoke the doctrine, “say the appointed _Credo_, profess reverence for all holy things, never allow doubt or questioning to pass from vague inquiry into heretical action--do this, and eat, drink, be merry; enjoy all things human law does not too absolutely forbid; if, then, there be a hereafter for the soul, the Church you have served will care for it. The Church will deliver you in safety into the great Forever even as the skilful shipmaster delivers the passive freightage after the tedious voyage.” Some of my preceptors had taught this doctrine almost in set words: all had taught it in their lives. How could a high-born youth idle in the sun before the Duomo of Florence, or drift on the shimmering Grand Canal at Venice and learn otherwise? Two things alone saved me from too implicit acquiescence in this teaching. The first was the fact that I had become too intimately acquainted with this engine of soul salvation, whilst working its many wheels at Rome. The second was an inherited spirit of independent honesty which never allowed me (at least with easy conscience) to shift a responsibility to another, or to set over myself a moral and spiritual keeper. Therefore I had of late years been a pagan in private thought, not from any inherent tendency to deliberate atheism, but because while tacitly repudiating the right of the Church to think for me, I had sluggishly refused to think for myself. But now had come on my scene two beings--Luther, Ilsa. And the eyes of my soul saw how differently!