Over these utterances of the honest Saxon the Italians were fain to gnash their teeth; but they had at hand neither armies nor lightning bolts. The heretic still warmed himself at Wittenberg. I knew Frederick had been the more confirmed in his studious inertia by his conference with the famous Erasmus. “Wherein has Luther erred?” asked the Elector. “In two great things,” replied the scholar; “he has attacked the Pope’s crown and the monks’ bellies.” Whereupon Frederick smiled and lapsed into that silence which proved so golden. So far the Vatican had been checked by sheer passivity, but this could not last forever. In January the Diet of the Empire would meet at Worms. All the Papal influence would be used to order the destruction of Luther. There it would be settled whether the hero of Germany was to burn at the fiat of a worldly Italian; and we all girded our loins, took courage from the past, and made ready each one of us to play his part for the Cause and its champion. Yet, in the midst of my greatest activity, riding post from Wittenberg to Brunswick, thrusting myself on ducal councillors, dictating letters to a wearied secretary, I sometimes asked myself, “What means all this to me?” What if Germany were redeemed from the shadow of Rome, a new hope dawned upon the land--what profit for myself? Had the Cause demanded a dash into battle to die on serried Swiss pikemen, I would have charged--how gladly! But to live on, to have the days of triumphant excitement pass, and the long slow years of painful upbuilding creep heavily,--what would they bring to me? I fought away the question. I added to my Bible formulas the wise adage, “take no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.” From Plato, Marcus Aurelius, and Plutarch I could add a score more of philosophic precepts. Often my mind recurred to my rash utterance to Moritz at the Regenstein touching his sister. Why could I not command my dreams? Even if immemorial law and custom had not made Ilsa von Blankenburg to me even as the dead, what season was this for thoughts of marrying and giving in marriage? Tradition, reason, religion, were alike against me. Was I not wedded to the Cause and that only? And yet,--I saw her almost every night. I leave my case to be diagnosed by philosophers and deep physicians. If I was paler than when I first entered Germany, it was, heaven knew, because I had had enough concern for Dr. Martin! I was passing through Minden after a tolerably satisfactory mission to the Council of Bremen when a thing took place which set all my head aglow, and taught me how I truly stood, how under high thoughts for the Cause I harbored plenty of plain human passion.