“Pest take the man,” grumbled the testy though friendly politician; “of all accursed things it is to be a theologian. ‘If you believe so, I will concede so,’ they say, when what the Emperor will want is a clear answer ‘_Sic_’ or ‘_Non_.’ Can we not make him understand?” “Noble and excellent Counsellor,” answered I with assurance, “I do not know what Dr. Luther will say, but I do know that he will give such answer as will not leave you, me, nor any man in the world, in doubt as to his meaning.” I could do no more for my master that day. Events must shape their course for a little. If there was more service which I could render, it would come later when Cæsar had spoken. Leaving Luther in the hands of his overzealous friends, I went to my own chambers, caused Andrea to change my dress so that I would appear merely as an inconspicuous ritter, and then went out unattended into the buzzing streets. Never was there a more polyglot crowd even by the Venetian Rialto. Spanish pikemen of the Imperial guard were declaiming in loud Castilian against the insipidity of German wines; there were a goodly number of giant-tall Swiss mercenaries in their bright, party-colored clothes and great feathery-set hats, and ecclesiastics swarmed of every rank, condition, and order. Mountebanks and hucksters of all kinds of cheap and cheating wares, seemed everywhere, and many none too prudish women. Carefree for the time, I wandered onward, catching snatches of conversation, much amused momentarily by a grave debate betwixt a Fleming and a Swabian as to whether Luther was able to fly and to make himself invisible by the black art, yet often touched by the manifest love and reverence with which vast numbers seemed to mention my master’s name. Knowing little of the winding streets, I let myself wander ever onward, guided by fancy, until at last I was under the shadow of the vast cathedral, and I saw sentries pacing with their halberds before the portals of the wall around the bishop’s palace. Within I knew lodged the Emperor and the Papal legates. I might have announced my rank and demanded admission, but I was in no mood for playing the courtier, and I was turning away to find what else might amuse me in the city, when I came face to face with an Italian in a livery I knew like my own, blue and gold cut after the manner of the Forlis. Involuntarily I must have stopped and stared at him, the more so as his face was familiar, in an uncertain way, and he, seemingly amazed, also stood and gazed at me curiously, then recovering his wits more nimbly than I, swept off his biretta with a profound bow. “Allow me to assure you, Eccellenza,” spoke he in Italian, “that I am now as always very devotedly at your service.” “Diavolo! fellow,” I answered, wholly aback. “I do not have the joy of your acquaintance.”