whether the smell of the heap of carcasses was unpleasant to him. The wolf replied, in a carefully considered speech, that he had never seen anything more pleasant. This artifice, however, was of no avail to the wolf. The lion meted out the same treatment to him as to the bear, tearing him up for his impudent flattery. The fox, who had witnessed all this, and how both the simplicity of the bear and the flattery of the wolf had given equal offence to the lion, was in great perplexity what to answer when it came to his turn. He went forward, however, and being interrogated as the others had been whether the smell of the den was disagreeable, he replied modestly that he could not express any opinion on the point, as he was labouring under a cold in the head." Alesius waited to hear from his host the moral or application of the apologue, but this was not given by him. He preferred to leave it to his own good sense, merely counselling him to be cautious of engaging in such discussions for the present. Ultimately, however, both came to see that there is a time to speak as well as a time to keep silence; and it is interesting to note that to the last both observed similar moderation in their statements of doctrine, both evinced the same desire, by conciliation to gain opponents, rather than to provoke them, notwithstanding all the hard usage they both met with from their secular and ecclesiastical superiors. [Sidenote: Befriended by Melanchthon.] Soon after this Alesius appears to have passed on from Cologne to Wittenberg, and there for a time to have resumed the study of theology, as well as of Greek and Hebrew, under Melanchthon and the other gifted teachers in that university. Luther he does not seem to have met for a time, or to have been acquainted with his writings when he published his _first_[297] treatises. Melanchthon cherished a special affection for Alesius and the Scottish exiles who soon after followed him to Wittenberg, believing that they were the descendants of those Scoti who had sent the early Christian missionaries to Germany, and that it became him to repay to them the great kindness the heathen Germans had received from their forefathers in the distant past.[298] It was while he was thus occupied that Alesius heard of the cruel edict of the Scottish bishops, and it hardly admits of doubt that he submitted to Melanchthon, and got corrected by him, his little treatise against their decree, forbidding the New Testament Scriptures to be used by the laity in the vernacular. It is a very pithy and forcible bit of pleading for the right of the Christian laity to possess and study the Scriptures in their own tongue. This remarkable treatise struck the true key-note in the contest it ushered in, and helped it on to victory--a victory which was substantially to be gained ere Knox had taken his place among the combatants on the side of the Reformation at all.[299]