“Therefore, I say unto you, be you warned and repent. No man while living has sinned beyond the gracious forgiveness of heaven. Be not as one of those who wrapped his talent in the napkin, and must return it to his Master tarnished and without usury. Return to Germany: to the contest to which God is summoning all men good and true. Then on the last great day will your soul be clear, and whether poor Martin Luther’s body lives or is burned will matter little. The Truth is from above and will prevail forever. I have spoken. Farewell.” I tore the paper to small bits the instant I had read it, but even at this far day I can repeat every word. BOOK II THE STRUGGLE CHAPTER XIV HOW I LEFT PALAESTRO I could not bring myself to go to the great dining room and face my guests. I felt my head on fire; my senses were no longer obedient. I sent Andrea down to announce that I was suddenly unwell and must ask my friends to amuse themselves for the evening without me; then for full two hours I sat in my darkening chamber, refusing to let the valets bring in lights, leaning upon the marble table with my face in my hands. The letter from Wittenberg had shaken me to the depths of my being. I knew perfectly well that I was being forced to decide that which should determine my whole future, both in this mortal life and in the hereafter--if hereafter there was. There was no evading it; no postponement to seek prudent counsel. There was not a soul in Palaestro in whose wisdom and impartiality I had the least confidence; in fact, I did not know a single stable counsellor for such matters in the wide world. Across the miles and leagues, plains, Alps, and Apennines, had come a trumpet call. “No man while living has sinned beyond the forgiveness of heaven. Return to Germany.” The call of a peasant-born, Saxon friar, and he had dared to send it to me,--the high-born, wealthy, sophisticated, elegant lord of Palaestro, to whom princes extended cheerful courtesy.--And what was I to do? For the friar had spoken the truth. “Truth, and only truth--curses on him!” so I groaned, while my teeth gritted. I could no more deny the justice of his appeal than I could deny my own existence--and my philosophic scepticism stopped at least there. “Come, come, Walter,” I once declaimed to myself, “do not be swept from your feet by a meddlesome friar’s chidings. What arch-fiend has commissioned Martin Luther to be guide and conscience for you? Not the Church--the Church is like to burn him. Not philosophy--a thousand arguments refute him. Not your self-interest--even if you quit Palaestro, your business is to seek preferment at some royal court. Dissolve the spell! Cast his malign power from you!” “Eccellenza, you are ill?” sounded Andrea’s anxious voice in my ear. “Will you have nothing? Can I not serve you?” “Yes, dog! Get from the room!”