But to pass to what more directly concerns our tale. Soon after the dissolution of the Diet, Count Arensberg was, for a second time, commissioned by the Elector as Envoy Extraordinary to the Court of Rome.

As we might expect, the Count was far from loth to undertake the office. It would bring him, he well knew, into the neighbourhood of the Lady Bianca ; and he argued that his high diplomatic position might enable him to befriend her father and herself. Further, his own mind, occupied though it had been by State struggles, had reflected much, while he said but little, upon the fresh and startling dogmas to which he had listened from the lips of Luther and Melancthon; and, with a heart still tenacious in its affections for the Papal See, he longed to renew intercourse with its wisest and most influential defenders.

Whilst he is journeying with his party towards Rome, we will draw aside and revisit Wittemberg, where Martin Luther, Philip Melancthon, Cruciger, Carlstadt, and others, were again assembled.

Some of them had returned from Frankfort, after their acute disappointment at the Elector Frederick's refusal of the crown of Germany. Before they met together in the room to which we would now conduct our readers, each of them by himself, and also with one or more of his brethren, had pondered over the election of Charles V., and had speculated upon its possible results to that movement to which they were all so deeply committed. They saw that it would

be vain to conceal from themselves, or from those of the people who had given them their adherence, that a power, the highest conceivable, would be arrayed against their persons and their doctrines. They were not to be deluded by the reasoning, that as Pope Leo X. at the beginning of the Diet, had tampered with the successful candidate, the latter would therefore unforgivingly thwart the schemes of the Papal Court against them. They well knew the severe bigotry of education in which the Spaniard had been trained; and all the possibilities of a German Inquisition, with its confiscations, its imprisonments, its autos-da-fé, came before them. Moreover, that act of Frederick of Saxony which, while they failed not to admire it for its self-renouncing patriotism, laid him open to suspicion of indecision and half-heartedness in the cause of truth, filled them with alarm lest he should compromise his past promises of giving them protection.

A drearier prospect could scarcely be imagined. And it was evident that several of them had caught the melancholy that such a dreary and perilous waste was fitted to inspire. Philip Melancthon, for example, unselfish though he was, and even mighty in endurance for truth's sake though he was whensoever danger actually confronted him, was ever constitutionally prone to dwell on perils in the distance. He could suffer, when the enemy was flourishing his falchion near him : it was not his virtue to seize the initiative, and to attack that enemy " without the gates."

Martin Luther, on the other hand, while he was as foreseeing of perils as was his friend, ever seemed to catch inspiration and daring motives from the prospect.

The little band, under a full consciousness of the imminency of their position, was silent for awhile. There was no movement among them, save when one or more glanced towards Father Martin-partly with sympathy for him, as the one who was the most exposed-partly from a wish that he would be the first to speak, and so, they hoped, to animate and direct them with his spirit and his counsel.

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Why, my German brothers, you all look as woebegone as if you were the friends of Socrates, and were watching him hemlock in hand!" said Luther, cheerily. "Wake up, Philip, from thy sorrow! Have I made thee promise to give a cock to Esculapius?"

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Nay, good master," returned Carlstadt, for Melancthon was too depressed to speak, "but can we shut our eyes to our many perils? Even Von Miltitz could not obtain thy person, so long as the Elector Frederick was the Regent; but where canst thou be safe from Pope Leo, now that the young Emperor will be sure to wish to soothe him?"

"Von Miltitz!" exclaimed Luther; "the Judas! the crocodile! the impostor! the liar! The villain little thought I knew that, while he was loading me with embraces, he had in his pocket seventy apostolical briefs for leading me bound and captive to that murderous Babylon. No, no, my dear Leo,"

he continued, snapping his fingers, "you must play the Italian somewhat more cleverly before you catch me!"

"God save thee, my dear master!" sighed Melancthon "already thy soul is among lions."

"Not with lions, Philip," returned Luther; and then relaxing into playfulness, as was his wont even at moments the most critical, he punned upon his friend's native name. "If thou must deal in such figures, Schwärtzland,* pray think of the real tenants of thy patrimony: think of snakes and serpents-base, bad, slimy reptiles; ay, and think, too, of batsblind bats. Such as these live in the Pope's Sodom. Didst thou say 'lions?' Why, I would go and ask them to give me lessons. But no, Philip: we must now, all of us, fight with asps and adders."

"And be wise as serpents!" added Melancthon.

"Cunning! dost thou advocate cunning, Melancthon?" demanded Carlstadt, with warmth. "As for me, I will become no serpent-charmer. I will sing no hell ditties, I assure you. I will wear mailed boots wherewith to bruise the heads of the devil's brood."

"Be ye wise as serpents, and harmless as doves," meekly returned Melancthon.

"I would counsel you, Doctor Martin," said the rash and imperious Carlstadt-"I would counsel you, not like a Spanish matador, to beguile the animal into blindness by a scarlet scarf, but to take him by the horns."

*Black land.

"Thou art a fool, Carlstadt! albeit I know thou art both learned and sincere. Even if I wished to imitate your Spanish matador, have I enough of scarlet wherewith to make a scarf? And as to taking the bull by the horns, art thou sure they would not be the horns of a dilemma ?"

"Take care, take care, Father Martin!" answered Carlstadt. "I liked not thy soft courtesies with the Roman Babylon, when we were at Augsburg, and . . .”

"And take care, sir," answered Luther, sternly, "that you insult her not so foully that the whole world should sympathize, and then take part with her."

Carlstadt rose from his seat chafed with indignation. He was about to answer; but Luther's eye, halfcommanding, half-mournful, silenced him, and he withdrew.

"There goes a man, Philip, so good, so popular in his faculties, yet so rash, so inconsiderate, that I foretell to thee he will cause us trouble infinite."

The effect that Carlstadt's behaviour had upon Melancthon was very striking. Hitherto during this interview he had (and there were many similar instances in his future as well as former life) shown little save mental prostration. His was a mind that made him far fitter to live as an intellectual recluse, than to come forth and buffet with the storms and tempests of men's living passions. Yet this arose not so much from cowardice or weakness of character, as from his exquisite sensibility to the pain of giving pain. But no