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"Satanas! Satanas!-avaunt thee! In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I command thee to begone."

Luther looked, and looked, certain of seeing something objective to himself. His vision, disturbed and anxious, created a dark shadow upon the whitewashed wall of his little cell.

"Devil! Satanas!" he exclaimed, "I will go to Worms, and in spite of thee and of thy brood. Is this thy far-famed shrewdness wherewith to keep me from cursing the Church that is thine offspring? Thou art at last beguiled into sorry weakness by the soft heart of thy paternity. Thy offspring-thine own offspring-I will curse! Babylon, thine own child!" exaggerated to any save those who have carefully studied Martin Luther's life. We pretend not for a moment that the above, a real history, was the result of aught more than the disturbed imaginings of a vivid and energetic mind, overwrought for the time being.

This must seem

Perhaps, also, it should be recollected, that the age in which Luther lived, was prone to realize in imaginative form the spirits of evil.

In such objective apparitions we can have no belief, neither have we even poetic credence in their fanciful developments.

But that the great Reformer, who was now on the threshold of an act that would inflict irremediable evil upon a system in which there was too much evil-that he should then have been made more than ordinarily the object of assault, who will deny?

CHAPTER XIII.

WHILE all these discussions and commotions were taking place in Saxony, Count Arensberg was journeying direct to the house of his fathers.

Passing over those incidents which must naturally have occurred to himself and his party, including the Lady Bianca and Theresa, her companion, we proceed to state that some days before he drew near to his castle, he sent forward his brother Rupert.

His object was, by this means, to inform his mother of much that his own written communications to her had left untold; of, in fact, the circumstances that related to Bianca's history and those persecutions which had made it absolutely necessary for her to fly to Germany, and to accept his escort thither.

The Countess-mother heard all Rupert had to say, herself making but few remarks. She was a strongminded woman, nevertheless she shared to the full in the common prejudices of her country against Italian and German intermarriages, especially in a case such as that which her sagacity now foreboded, where the bride would be not only an Italian, but one brought

up in the court of Rome-a court such as that must be (she felt sure) over which the recent Pontiffs had presided.

There was also another feeling in her mind. When Rupert detailed to her what he had heard at Rome of the refinement and the luxury of the Della Scala palace, and further, as he spoke (from his own knowledge) of the circle in which the Lady Bianca must have been moving, she feared lest her approaching guest should be struck at the absence of many of those elegances as to which Germany, even in the abodes of her greatest nobles, was far behind Italy.

In the sixteenth century, the chief splendour of the German nobles consisted in the number of their retainers, armed or unarmed. They had, indeed, their family plate to display upon great occasions; neither were their wives or daughters without splendid jewellery, heir-looms in their several houses; but their castles were but barely furnished. From century to century their interior had but very seldom been reappointed, so that old-fashioned tapestry, whose hangings were faded, and chairs and tables antique and worn, and floors strewed with fresh rushes instead of carpets, were often united with a gorgeous display of gold and silver upon the side-boards.

The Countess-mother was quite alive to the fact that these incongruities were especially manifest in Castle Arensberg, and her Germanic pride liked not the idea, that an unfavourable impression might be made upon the mind of the noble and fair Italian lady.

She, therefore, determined to throw around the first meeting as much state as was compatible with the means at her disposal, and the uncertainty about the exact time of her eldest son's arrival.

It was a few days after the arrival of Rupert, when Count Arensberg and his little cavalcade drew within sight of his castle, which stood proudly out on an eminence that commanded a wide view of the waving woods around, and also of the distant town of Wittemberg. The approach to it was circuitous, and thus gave time to the beating heart of the Lady Bianca to compose itself.

Haven of rest though the ancestral house of her German lover appeared to her, yet the proud blood of the Della Scala mounted high to her forehead, as she thought of the desolate and unattended manner in which she was about to be presented to the Countess-mother.

Arensberg, as soon as he had crossed the drawbridge, which had been joyfully lowered at his summons, found that everything was prepared for a magnificent reception. His anxious eye saw this in an instant, and thence he drew right auguries as to the feeling and intention of his parent. Dismounting, and with great care assisting Bianca to dismount also, he gracefully bade her welcome to the domain of his forefathers, and asked permission to lead her to his mother.

With a proud and gratified mien, he passed through the lines of the ordinary warders of the castle, in whose rear were marshalled with scrupulous care numerous bodies of retainers.

VOL. II.

L

His mother, accompanied by Rupert, met him and his fair charge on the threshold of the great hall, and quickly, upon their greetings having been exchanged, he could not forbear to notice, and thencefrom to draw cheering inferences, that the sombre old room was furnished anew with a fresh and sumptuous dais, and that the seats, which his mother and her sons were wont to occupy, were brightened up with flowered silk brocade.

These, his observations of things around him, were far from trivial in their influence on his mind and hopes. Lord and master he knew himself to be. His own will in regard to any marriage he might choose to contract he knew would be law; but he was desirous to have his widowed mother's full sanction (and this thoughtful arrangement for receiving his bride promised it); and then also—yea, much more so—he was sensitively fearful lest his refined Bianca might meet with anything to offend her taste, that had been so long and so skilfully educated.

We have said that his mother, accompanied by Rupert, met them upon the threshold of the great hall. For the first time since her lord's death, she had donned a robe of rich black velvet, interwoven all over, as was the fashion, with golden acorns. The petticoat underneath was richly embroidered, and even fringed with bullion-gold, and the dress in front was made short enough to show this embroidery. The sleeves were somewhat loose, lined with white satin, and at the edges embroidered also. As may be seen

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