“I will answer your Majesty even to the risk of offence. The Emperor would send me to Rome to enforce certain outward reforms upon Pope and Curia, which reforms it may prove needful to compel at the culverin’s mouth. At the same time Martin Luther, instigator of these reforms, is to be burned as a heretic. I would to God the venality and worldliness of the Curia might cease, but will the Emperor believe me in this,--the mere cleansing of the Vatican will be only as the cooling of the forehead of a man wasting with fever; comfort for the instant, but never the cure. We of the party of Luther would go beyond these palliatives. It is perverted faith which has led to perverted morals. The dogma and doctrine of the Church seem to us wholly wrong, so utterly beyond repair we may never mend them. Let us, therefore, turning reverently to the Scriptures, build with God’s help a better Church, exempt from the inveterate errors of the old.” “Holy Mother!” swore Charles, half rising. “I asked you, sirrah, for a personal answer. I am given a heretical sermon.” I faced him steadily. A greater than Carolus Quintus would not have shaken me in the mood that held me then. “Take not my refusal, Sire, as ungrateful churlishness. The Emperor’s opinion and Luther’s differ as to the crying need of the Church. With all loyalty to the Emperor, my conscience binds me to the opinion of Luther.” Charles surveyed me with mingled wonderment and wrath. “You are not flattering, Monsieur. The Wittenberg heretic is preferred by you to myself.” “Then let me name a higher authority. Your Majesty would reform the old Church. In other words, new wine should be put into very old and rotten wineskins. A wiser and mightier than the Emperor has long since asserted that this cannot be done.” The Emperor laid down his knife, and his suspicious scrutiny grew keener. “Monsieur, if I did not know by indubitable evidence that you had thwarted the cleverest Papal agents in your intrigues to win the northern princes to Luther, if I did not know you had almost persuaded Leo himself to withhold his Bull, I could scarce believe you sane. Tell me now, on your knightly word, do you profess your true reasons for rejecting the fairest proffer ever made by prince to subject?”