When this second emissary had departed I was fain to cast myself upon an armchair. The touch of the steel had set all my senses tingling. I held out my manacled wrists before my eyes as though I were gazing on something wholly apart from my own identity. “And yet, and yet,” I repeated aloud in a kind of wonderment, “an hour ago, on my bare word to the Emperor ‘I accept your service,’ I could have been envied by all the world. And now--” my voice broke in what was neither a sob nor a laugh, “I am truly glad!” Nor was this last hypocrisy. I was in one of those strangely exalted states, wherein all the common goods of life seem to take on values wholly new. I seemed a prisoner as hopelessly as if I were immured in a Castilian Inquisition dungeon, or spiked to the bench in the Turkish galleys. I knew there was every chance that Forli would be able to execute his purpose of conducting me unhindered to Italy, and once there I knew enough of the bolts and bars of Papal palazzos to be sure of going forth a free man perhaps never, perhaps only when my hair was bleached to snow. Yet I refused to despair, I refused to tell myself I had played the fool and authorized Forli’s anathemas. I knew that what I had done that day would stand justified to Ilsa, to Luther, to God. I cared for little else. And again, even as I felt of the strange steel upon my wrists, and heard the clink of the chains, it was brought home to me that I was to do some other signal service for the Cause, that in some great way, I knew not how, Luther and I had not been sundered forever; that I must keep my head clear, my senses alert, my courage ready. Perhaps the call would come only after years of weary prison, perhaps in an hour; only let me not fail to do my part. So passed that day, and so several others, and I was buoyed up by an unnatural kind of excitement which I think made Forli and my keepers sadly puzzled when they looked for some sinking of spirit. Then at length on a morning as I sat striving to read the Cardinal’s new copy of Musæus, Forli himself entered and with him some high Italian ecclesiastic whom I did not recognize, but who doubtless was a member of the Papal legation. The newcomer started at sight of my ornaments, and Forli deliberately tapped his forehead and shook his head sadly. “The case I have mentioned. Very pitiful. A fine young cavaliere utterly bewitched by the heretics. I am conducting him back to Italy with as little noise as possible. We need not fear to talk freely before him. He can do nothing.” I understood entirely that Forli had arranged to hold the dialogue in that place for my particular benefit, but that could not prevent me from being all ears. “I understand the great heretic leaves Worms to-morrow,” continued the Cardinal.