I stood dumb. Bursting into an irresistible passion she flung herself into my arms. “Gualtiero! Gualtiero! Break this foul spell. Cast over this mad friar. You were not born for strife and disaster, and following a bad cause to a worse end. You were born for the South; for poetry and song; for all that is best from old Hellas and Rome; for blue skies and soft beds and fair visions; for happiness--and love--and for me!” And then she covered my face with hot kisses. Why did I succumb? Why does any man succumb when on one side are truth, honor, justice, salvation; and on the other expediency, pleasure, and a beautiful beseeching woman? I was neither a Socrates nor a Christian martyr. I pressed her in my arms. I returned her kiss. “I will go with you,” I said; “I will go with you to Palaestro.” Since then I have often wondered if I did not almost commit the unpardonable sin of grieving the Holy Spirit; for I knew the good, and I chose the evil. CHAPTER XIII THE CALL FROM THE NORTH A week at the fashionable waters of Baden, an easy trip across the Alps through Basel, Lucerne, Lugano; then again the Italian speech, the Italian color, the Italian sky. Two weeks at Milan, a month in the palace of the lordly Contarini’s at Venice, with the plashing oars of the gondola ever in my ears, with Marianna divinely radiant ever at my side,--and the Harzland, Ilsa, and Martin the friar, all seemed exceeding far away. With a pleasure rekindled by a year’s absence I plunged back into the old voluptuous life. Delightful indeed to hear again the tinkle of the castinets, to taste the delicate Chianti and Frascati, to wake in the morning, to fall asleep in the evening, with the renewed vow, “to-day, to-morrow, forever, let black care hide his face. My life is to enjoy.” Yet even in Venice I heard rumors of the insolent disturber at Wittenberg. I heard his case discussed during a charming supper at the Doge’s palace. Everybody agreed he was a bold, sincere man, probably of considerable piety and attacking undoubted evils. “But,” spoke the sagacious Senator Morosini, stroking his long gray beard, as he wound up the conversation, “what will you? On the Rialto they tell me his propaganda has already cost the Vatican four hundred thousand ducats. He must be silenced speedily,--if necessary by stake and faggots. However, if His Holiness is wise, he will recall the very disagreeable commotions following the execution of Hus the Bohemian heretic. The safest way to silence this fellow is by a bishopric.” “There is no gag like a mitre,” nodded the Spanish Ducca de Obispo. “I hear Rome is likely to use it.” As for me, I sat wisely in silence, by no means confident the proffer of a bishopric would prove so efficacious as these two experienced and noble gentlemen imagined.