"Wait-wait a little, my Lord Arensberg," interrupted the Ambassador. He said this in a tone which could not be mistaken. It seemed to involve some dark and hidden certainty of the ultimate discomfiture of Martin Luther. And it approached so near to a warning to drop the subject, that it was followed by an immediate and unpleasant silence.

The remainder of the evening was diversified by other topics; but we need not enter on them, as they are foreign to our tale.

CHAPTER VI.

THE same day, on which the Saxon Ambassador had given a feast in honour of Count Arensberg, was witness of another scene-one far more important to the interests of Martin Luther. It even affected, and still affects, all Christendom.

Our readers will have gathered from the former chapter, that Dr. Eckius, Professor in the University of Ingoldstadt, had no great grounds for complacency in the result of his ecclesiastical tournament with Carlstadt, and Luther, and Melancthon, in the presence of the university of Leipsic. The judges of the lists had indeed accorded him the victory; but all men knew that their own prejudices had suborned them in favour of the Papal champion. Eckius himself was well aware of it; and their suffrages, thus obtained, could not soothe those irritating wounds which Luther had so trenchantly inflicted, and which the scorn of thousands of the German people, both of the noble, the learned, and the plebeian, kept bare and open.

Furious was this self-same Eckius: very furious was he, especially, because the young layman, Melancthon,

had exposed his bad logic and his worse Greek. And grasping in his rage after other weapons-weapons forbidden by the laws of the aforesaid tournament— he repaired to Rome, and resolved not to leave it until he obtained force with which to crush his brave antagonists.

Day after day was he employed in preaching his crusade. Hordes of monks and priests listened to him, and some, stung by his details of the foul contumelies heaped upon them by Martin Luther, and others, roused by a less selfish jealousy for their Church, demanded of his Holiness to proclaim war to the knife with the blaspheming heretic.

Day after day he gained access to Bishops of power and Cardinals of weight with Christ's Vicar; but with them he found far greater difficulty. How could they withdraw attention from some fine old antique, or from some fresh discovered Pagan manuscript, or from some grand fête, or from some new mistress, to think of the insane bletherings of a Transalpine monk?

Still his perseverance was indomitable, and at last he so wrought upon their fears that they beset Pope Leo with entreaties; and, in fine, the great Sybarite summoned a consistory, and commanded that Eckius should be heard.

We have already given a description of such an ecclesiastical assemblage; we need now, therefore, do no more than signalize what was peculiar to the present one, both as to its preliminaries and its appear

ance.

The day before, the Pontiff had been taking even more than his accustomed diversion in hunting over the fields of the Campagna. Returning late in the evening, jaded and only quickened to occasional vivacity by the movements of his favourite hawks and hounds, Cardinal S. Georgio (he who had been so deeply implicated in the conspiracy against his life, but whom he had restored to his confidence) approached him.

"Will it please your Holiness that I summon a consistory for to-morrow?"

"Down! down, Hector!" exclaimed the Pontiff to a large wolf-dog, whom he much cherished, and who, notwithstanding the fatigues of the day, was constantly leaping up to gain some notice from his sacred master. "Down, I say!"

S. Georgio looked at his Holiness with a surprised smile.

"Did your Eminence speak to us?" asked Leo; and, while asking, he scrutinized the face of the Cardinal.

"The servant of your Holiness but begged commands as to the consistory to be held to-morrow," returned S. Georgio.

"A consistory to-morrow! No, surely not. We have to sing with Rudolphi; then we have to give audience to Michael Angelo, rude man! great though he is; and then, as your Eminence knows well-and we hope you will enjoy it-have we not commanded Battista to give us the Andria of Terence in the evening? We will have no consistory to-morrow."

VOL. II.

F

"Then may the servant of your Holiness humbly ask when this consistory shall be convened ?"

"Ah! you beautiful, you brave bird!" exclaimed his Holiness, as one of the falconers passed on before him, carrying a hooded hawk upon his wrist. "Ah! Pschye, love," the Pontiff continued, and the poor bird, though bleeding from a frightful gash inflicted by the heron he had destroyed, moved and raised his crest at his master's voice. "Ah! Pysche, love, thou shalt be taken care of well. Thou hast done good work today.

"Your Eminence," continued Pope Leo sternly, turning to the Cardinal, "if we had but servants in the Church as faithful and as self-forgetful as these poor servants in the field, our sacred person would not be either so endangered, or so beset with the torment of little foes."

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Spare me spare me, your Holiness!" prayed S. Georgio. "I have wept, I have fasted, I have done all penance for my awful sin, and . . . .

"Stay this instant!" commanded Leo. "Doth your Eminence think us ungenerous enough to revert to the unhappy past? Did we not tell you that our morning draught, after your submission, was of the waters of Lethe? Do you so misbelieve us?"

The Cardinal was silent. Pope Leo was too generous a man for the Cardinal to comprehend.

To explain this ecclesiastical indifference of his Holiness: Of course he loved his own throne. Of course he loved his own life. Of course, therefore, he looked