When I read that “the government of the Pope agrees with the government of the apostles as well as Lucifer with Christ, hell with heaven, night with day, and yet the Pope calls himself Christ’s Vicar,” how could my memory fail to race back to the scenes just witnessed at Rome? I read on and on, involuntarily nodding my head with approval at even the fiercest invective. I was in no mood to analyze the argument, to weigh the justice of each specific criticism, of each suggested improvement in churchly discipline. Nothing seemed spared. Saints’ days, masses for the dead, fasting, begging pilgrimages, a thousand other things all were written down in one fiery condemnation. And I smiled when I read “Heretics should be overcome with books, not with fire, else the hangmen would be the most learned doctors in the world, and there would be no need of study.” “Ah! Monsignori by the Tiber,” quoth I, “you will not be pleased to have doctrines like that prevail.” I remember casting the little book upon my pillow, and leaping up with a laugh which awakened Andrea, who was sleeping on a pallet near the door. “Parried! Parried fairly,” I cried; “the sword of Rome is blunted on the war-club of Germany. Behold the answer to the Papal Bull!” * * * * * A few more days of hard riding brought me to Wittenberg. The Elbe country was all in the green and glory of ripening summer. A golden haze filled the evening as I cantered over the plain and saw the great tower of the Schloss-kirche looming ever higher. The honest peasantry were trudging homeward from the fields. Their genial “Gruss Gott” was welcome to my ears. All was peace and quietude. Rome and its atmosphere of ostentatious elegance, suppressed intrigue, polite scandal, pagan learning, almost faded from my ken. I rode up the street of the little city. The lamps were being lighted. A few students were trolling a hearty catch in one of the taverns. Leaving the horses to be taken by my servants to the Castellan’s I went alone and unannounced to the Augustinian convent. Familiarity made me enter boldly. I mounted the stairway and threw open the door of Dr. Luther. It was the same room that I had entered on an October evening almost three years before,--the green tile stove, the solid chairs, the great solid table. Only around the open lattice vines were climbing, and I caught a heavy perfume from the convent gardens. The room was very dim, but I stopped involuntarily as I crossed the threshold. Dr. Luther was kneeling on the praying stool in one corner before a tall, bare, wooden cross. He was praying softly aloud. I could not catch the words, but stood awestruck, reverent, for no small time. Presently he arose and turned. His bold, strong face seemed to shine out upon me from the gloaming. Then of a sudden he saw me. “Walter! _Ach! Liebe Gott!_”