“Magister Bembo,” I began, “do me the honor to hearken. I tell you that I am the son of a German nobleman, as honorable and perfect a cavalier as ever drew a sword; and I will not have my father’s nation slandered to my face. If I have spent most of my life in my mother’s Southland, it is not through shame for my father’s North. Nobility and learning, and ripe wisdom there are in the North,--things which it ill becomes you men of erudition to deny. Honesty, kindliness and loyalty there are in the North--things which you of Italy might learn right well. And if the Germans still believe heartily divers matters of religion, which you of Italy pretend to believe, and scoff at in private,--the greater glory theirs, the greater shame for you!” Bembo was red now, and it was not from wine; but I would not cease in order to let him speak. My own anger was kindling. I was precisely in the mood for plain truths and cutting words. “Let us be frank, noble friends! You know that this Christian religion which is so often on our tongues is to us as great a legend as that of Isis and Osiris of Egypt. If we acknowledge a deity is He not in reality the God of Plato, not of Moses and the Nazarene? Are not our master-philosophers and teachers from Athens, not from Jerusalem? Our wise Bembo, I understand, has lately warned his students against reading St. Paul because of his bad Greek. Rather let us tell the world to withdraw from the teachings of Matthew and Luke because they are but fair fables. Let us not depose His Holiness--avert it, Gods!--let us rather proclaim him the leader, the arch-hierophant of ourselves the emancipated, the lovers of the beautiful, of the eternal verities which we grasp, not through blind Jewish tradition, but through exalted reason. Then--_then_ we can taunt the Germans for their credulity, when we have ceased to take their money, and ceased to profess to believe a lie.” I had silenced Bembo. That triumph at least was mine. Stunned by my audacity, no one for a long moment either laughed or applauded. Then I saw a lady--in scared fashion--crossing herself. Several of the older cardinals were trying hard to look horrified. Then came a little ripple of voices, half-deriding, half-approving, if not my sentiments, at least my boldness. I stood for a moment with the hot flush on my cheeks, my heart prompting me to say more; but Marianna’s upraised finger commanded silence, and Chigi with ready wit answered for the writhing Bembo.