An elegant and hospitable court it was which the Archbishop-Elector Albrecht maintained at Mainz. I had no sooner made known my credentials than I was overwhelmed with kindnesses, both from the prince-prelate himself and all his courtiers. A kindly, open-handed, well intentioned lord was Albrecht, young and handsome, friendly to art and learning, pleasure loving, but not a rake. Alas! that ambition had led him into the Church, when he had fewer qualifications for leadership in things spiritual than had his Arabian horses. He lived the life of a luxurious secular magnate, with never a thought of any duty touching the ‘cure of souls’ such as was assumed to pertain to the episcopal state. To him all Tetzel’s doings were but a piece of clever secular business, the wrong whereof he could never have understood had he tried. Therefore the world has condemned him,--not because he was a knave, but because he knew not the time and the opportunity. Life in this old Rhineland town seemed one perpetual holiday. The young western German nobles of the court were a mawkish lot, far inferior to their sturdy Saxon cousins. They wore curly, blond-dyed hair, laced tightly like women, and covered themselves with necklaces and bracelets; likewise they affected long tight hose of startling color, each leg of a different hue. With such gentry I had little in common, but others whom I met, poets, scholars, and soldiers, made my life very agreeable. Hunts, song recitals, giddy balls, and the like, whiled away our time. Above all there was the constant company of the Cardinale di Forli and of Marianna. Forli, I soon learned, was in Mainz on an important mission from the Vatican touching the impending choice of a new Emperor. Every rumor from Vienna gave old Maximilian only a few more months, and the Pope had cause enough to be interested in his successor. Forli’s splendid travelling carriages and long retinue of handsome servants had made a deep impression on the good folk of Mainz. As a concession to Northern prudery Marianna had travelled as his “niece,” but I suspect that many sagacious mortals guessed the truth. At our first meeting I of course heard all the gossip from Rome,--of the Pope’s successful stag hunts, of the nipping of a sensational conspiracy against His Holiness’s person, and particularly of the creation of thirty new cardinals. “Absolutely unheard of,” Forli grumbled; “most unfair to us older members! But the treasury was dry, and every rascal could be taxed twenty to forty thousand ducats for his red hat. Then, too, what a magnificent banquet we had in their honor and at their expense at the Vatican!” “You will be among the next creations,” threw out Marianna. “Possibly,” I assented coldly, “but I doubt exceedingly if my career lies in the Church.” So ended our conversation then, but what more privately I said to Marianna, I leave for the wise to imagine....