it was of such heroic nobleness as the world never before witnessed!"

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Sorry for it!" exclaimed Wolfram, an old, bluntspoken Saxon knight.

"Sorry for it?" impatiently demanded Teutleben. "Why, you would not have his Grace to be set up to be baited by a whole pack of Lutheran hounds. Der Teufel! I love our master. I would not care to have him badgered by those accursed Moslems. Thou, Wolfram, wouldst have helped him to destroy them. But it had sorely grieved me if his wisdom had to save the Empire in a conflict with low, canting, boorish hypocrites."

"Then you think, my lord," asked Arensberg quietly, "that these low, canting, boorish hypocrites, as your Excellency calls them, are strong enough to make head even against an Emperor?"

"Indeed!” cried the Ambassador, raising his eyes in astonishment, and laughing. "They find favour in your eyes, do they? In the eyes of Count Arensberg -the gay, the frank, open-hearted Arensberg? In the eyes of Arensberg”—and then he looked at him in the spirit of provoking badinage—“who, report saith, is over head and ears in love with a fair ward of Mother Church?"

Count Arensberg's countenance fell instantly. One moment before and it was beaming, now it became pale yet dark. He was deeply wounded at the gross untimeliness of the jest, and that jest grated upon feelings that had been torn with anxiety all that morning.

All the guests, with one exception, both knew and

admired Arensberg: all the guests maintained a silence that was expressive of courteous dissent from the flippancy of their host.

But Teutleben, though his keen eye noticed the ill impression of his sally, was too stubborn to apologize. Nay, more, he felt uneasy that the wise Frederick should have thought it necessary to send an envoy, and there was more real malice in his gibe than Arensberg, or most of those who were at table, even surmised.

The silence was becoming awkward, when Arensberg prudently broke it, by starting another and a very different topic of conversation.

"Will your Excellency suffer me to propose the health of his Holiness?"

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Right willingly, my lord," returned the Ambassador. "And would that I had a flask of old Falernian for the drinking! Sing us a song, Signor Varini. I have learned more of old Horace since I have been immured here, than I ever thought could have penetrated through my skull of parchment."

While the guests were employed upon this toast, Count Arensberg was startled when a low, exquisite voice began, in recitative, the following ode of Ho

race:

"With glasses, made for gay delight,
'Tis Thracian, savage rage to fight:
With such intemperate, bloody fray
Fright not the modest god away.
Monstrous! to see the dagger shine
Amid the cheerful joys of wine.

Here bid this impious clamour cease,
And press the social couch in peace.
Say, shall I drink this heady wine

Prest from the rough Falernian vine ?" *

Count Arensberg looked, and looked again at the singer. He was seated at the same table; therefore, Arensberg concluded he must be one of his own Saxon land. "And yet," he said to himself, "I have often before heard that voice, and from a person vastly different in appearance. Ah! I have it. Is he not the shaven scoundrel that accompanied Lord Adrian, the Cardinal? But here he is a perfumed layman."

He restrained all expressions of surprise, resolving, however, most vigilantly to watch the Canon's move

ments.

"Thanks! Signor Varini," exclaimed the ambassador, as the song closed. "By-the-by, have you seen Doctor Eckius to-day?"

"I have not, your Excellency," replied Varini (for by this feigned name we must call the Canon). "Doctor Eckius," he continued, and in a voice so well dissembled that Arensberg began to doubt his own suspicions"Doctor Eckius, ever since we arrived here, has been so engaged with the sacred conclave, that scarcely any of his suite have seen him."

“Ha!" exclaimed Arensberg, with well-affected wonder. "Is Doctor Eckius here? The last time I saw him, was during his grand tournament at Leipsic."

* Hor. Od. xxvii., lib. i., Francis's Translation.

"His tournament at Leipsic ?" cried old Wolfram, laughingly. "What! have our reverend fathers then taken the lance in hand?"

"Lance of the tongue, Wolfram," answered Arensberg, with a smile.

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Humph!" growled the old knight. "I wish they would lay that lance aside rather!"

"Heresy! Heresy !" shouted the merry cavaliers around the table.

The grim old warrior was as choleric as he was openhearted, and he took fire at the banter.

"Then call it heresy, if you will, my brethren!" he retorted fiercely. "If Lord Arensberg referred (which I suppose he did) to priests' quarrels, I wish they would leave our fair Saxony in peace; or, at least, let the reverend fathers of other lands suffer us to fight and then make it up among ourselves, without their cursed interference."

"Nonsense! Wolfram," said the ambassador. "Do you know that Doctor Eckius was the challenged, not the challenger; and, beaten as we were, we owe it to our knightly courtesy not to insult our conqueror."

"Not beaten, methought, may it please your Excellency," said Arensberg. "Neither was Doctor Eckius the challenged, but the challenger, if I heard rightly."

"What do you call beaten, my Lord Arensberg ?" demanded Teutleben. "Did not the faculty of Paris— did not that of Louvain-did not that of Cologne-condemn Luther's propositions, and so award the victory to Doctor Eckius ?"

"True, your Excellency. They did condemn Martin Luther, but (and do not think that I am a convert to Martin Luther, for I am not) as far as I can judge, Doctor Eckius did not beat either him, or Carlstadt or Melancthon-two others that were with him."

"Three against one? Ah! that was not fair, Arensberg," said Wolfram.

"Not so: Eckius had all the doctors of Leipsic, and the Bishop of Ingoldstadt, to help him."

"More unfair than ever! but on the other side," returned Wolfram. "And you say, my lord, that Luther was not beaten after all ?"

"Not if I might presume to be a judge of men's outward looks and movements, without entering (which I would not) into the merits of the battle. If a man reels in his saddle, I can see that he has met a homethrust, whether he be the champion of the right or of the wrong. And I saw Eckius reel often-Luther never.

"And what would you say, Wolfram," continued Arensberg, "if, after the melée, crowds on crowds. rushed to the pavilion of one knight, while the other was allowed to retire in silence? When I left Saxony, even Poleander, Eckius's own secretary and disciple and friend, had gone over to the side of Luther. So had George of Anhalt. And as to the students who had flocked to the fight from Erfurt and from Ingoldstadt, so many have left their universities and sought for Luther's teaching, that Wittemberg has already doubled its numbers. Is that being beaten, Wolfram?”* * Note 8.