“Since you entered the room, Madonna.” I knew the words would hurt, but for once I was keeping back nothing. “Am I such a fiend, then?” Her words were almost a wail. In the red half light she had never looked more beautiful. “Hear me, Marianna,” I threw back, still moving away from her, “this may be the last time we shall speak face to face on the old terms. Therefore hear the cold truth. Who am I--German, Italian? For believe me no man can be truly the son of more than one country. If Italian, I am yet too German to make a worthy one. You know the saying, ‘Tedesco Italianato è un diavolo incarnato.’ What have I to give to Italy, to win even dim glory for the Palaestro name? Arms? I was never shaped for a great general or even a tolerable captain. Poetry? My sonnets show abundant talent; never genius. Elegant manners and taste? I have too many noble ancestors, men of high words and higher deeds, to desire to have fops say on the Corso, ‘imitate the cloaks and cookery of the Conte di Palaestro.’ So much for Italy. But in Germany--” “Ay, in Germany,” she moaned. “_There_ a work awaits one worthy at least of a Lichtenstein-Regenstein. Old manners and beliefs change. New manners and beliefs are born. If there is to be a battle, my fathers would have me with the first in it. If wrongs threaten, it is mine to strive to avert them. If wrongs are committed, mine to avenge them: and if I fail, why, then, is not my state as glorious as that of the old Regenstein ritters who died before the walls of Jerusalem, yet never entered the Holy City? Not failure, but the manner of failure, will disgrace my fathers’ house.” “Gualtiero! are you turned mad? You know your heretic friar will be burned.” “No, by the pillars of heaven! First I prophesied that evil to him, then you to me. We were wrong. He will not be burned.” “Not burned?” her voice rose shriller than ever. “What devils will save him?” “I--we, the Germans.” “You--the Germans? You link yourself finally with that accursed folk?” I folded my arms across my breast. “Yes, Marianna,” I replied, striving to speak calmly; “you have said it. I _am_ a German. Martin Luther is a German. And we Germans will not suffer our truth-telling, honor-loving friar to be banned and burned by your un-Christian and sensual Italian Pope.” “Gualtiero!” The word came as one long scream. She threw her arms above her head and rushed from the room.... I paced to and fro a dozen times, then cast myself down again by the table. I was laughing in a kind of unhealthy delirium. Hedwig’s lines were dancing through my head again, louder, louder. “Half of Northland, Half of Southland, Never gay Till all of one land.” “Ach! Gott,” I cried in round Saxon, “I should be very gay then--for I am wholly German now!” In a desperate, mad way I was feeling a great relief of spirits. The hesitancy, the tension, was over. The battle had begun, and I had chosen my part.