All this cut and thrust brought nowhere, and I was a fool to have believed that I could have accomplished anything. I was too furious to argue calmly, and Tetzel was beyond all argument. At least the reverend rascal heard his sins set before him in no mincing language. At last realizing that our colloquy was passing into a mere badinage of coarse epithets and empty threats, I had the wisdom to turn on my heel. “No doubt, my venerable scoundrel,” I cried, as a last volley, “you have never heard of the learned Italian Masuccio. Grow wise, then, hearing what he said of you friars. ‘The best punishment for you would be for God to abolish purgatory and the fear thereof; then you would get no more alms and must go back to your spades.’” “Heresy! Blasphemy!” roared the Commissioner and a dozen satellites. So I left them, calling for their “sleeping drinks” and making the dice rattle. I went to bed in the most impious mood imaginable. The affair had confirmed me in my long standing suspicion that what most men called religion was a noxious lie. “Curses on the faith that makes a creature like Ilsa--born to dwell in the sunlight--live out her days in terror and gnawing woe! If god I must have, let him be the Zeus of Plato and Aristotle.” And with such unholy thoughts, presently I went to sleep. FOOTNOTES: [2] About nine English miles. CHAPTER IX I HEAR MARTIN LUTHER The next day we journeyed on to Wittenberg, through the white birch forests and seared autumn grain fields, the villages still keeping their poverty-stricken character, and our company overtaking again many plodding companies, this time all headed away from Jüterbog. Hardly a person but bore his or her little scroll signed by Master Tetzel. But although the Gräfin would hear never a word, Moritz and I were pleased to catch not a little adverse comment upon the proceedings of yesterday. “Your Lordships doubtless understand, but I do not,” grumbled a gray old farmer at a tavern where we stopped for beer. “I have bought my paper, but I can never see why the dear God so loves money that for lack of a few groschen He would leave a soul in everlasting torment. Best no doubt to be on the safe side,--but I cannot make it out.” “Nor I,” spoke a younger companion, “why the Lord Pope--who, they say, is a most charitable man--does not out of pure love empty the whole of purgatory, since he is willing to free so many souls just for such a trifle as a gift for a church?” “Hush, Grundold,” urged a third, cautiously; “don’t talk against the reverend commissioner. Priests have ears everywhere.” “We will never betray your gossip, good folk,” said I, quitting them: “but we have no answer to your questions.”