“Here, good father, excellent cook and humble servitor, I trust your residence with us has not led you to forget the learning you put to such poor advantage in the Monastery of Monnonstein. Canst thou construe this for us? Is it in good honest German or bastard Latin?” “It is in Latin,” said the captive monk, on glancing at the document in the other’s hand. “Then translate it for us, and quickly.” Father Gottlieb took the parchment handed him by the Baron, and as his eyes scanned it more closely, he bowed his head and made the sign of the cross upon his breast. “Cease that mummery,” roared the Baron, “and read without more waiting or the rod’s upon thy back again. Who sends us this?” “It is from our Holy Father the Pope,” said the monk, forgetting his menial position for the moment, and becoming once more the scholar of the monastery. The sense of his captivity faded from him as he realised that the long arm of the Church had extended within the impregnable walls of that tyrannical castle. “Good. And what has our Holy Father the Pope to say to us? Demands he the release of our excellent scullion, Father Gottlieb?” The bent shoulders of the old monk straightened, his dim eye brightened, and his voice rang clear within the echoing walls of the castle courtyard. “It is a ban of excommunication against thee, Lord Baron von Grunewald, and against all within these walls, excepting only those unlawfully withheld from freedom.” “Which means thyself, worthy Father. Read on, good clerk, and let us hear it to the end.” As the monk read out the awful words of the message, piling curse on curse with sonorous voice, the Baron saw his trembling servitors turn pale, and even his sixteen knights, companions in robbery and rapine, fall away from him. Dark red anger mounted to his temples; he raised his mailed hand and smote the reading monk flat across the mouth, felling the old man prone upon the stones of the court. “That is my answer to our Holy Father the Pope, and when thou swearest to deliver it to him as I have given it to thee, the gates are open and the way clear for thy pilgrimage to Rome.” But the monk lay where he fell and made no reply. “Take him away,” commanded the Baron impatiently, whereupon several of the menials laid hands on the fallen monk and dragged him into the scullery he had left. Turning to his men-at-arms, the Baron roared: “Well, my gentle wolves, have a few words in Latin on a bit of sheep-skin turned you all to sheep?” “I have always said,” spoke up the knight Segfried, “that no good came of captured monks, or meddling with the Church. Besides, we are noble all, and do not hold with the raising of a mailed hand against an unarmed man.” There was a low murmur of approval among the knights at Segfried’s boldness.