childish minds of the common people practised idolatry, so much
the better. The Infinite and Eternal was no subject for the artist. The
humanization of God only belittled his infinite and illimitable nature.
Earthly life offered art material enough. Man himself would be the
worthiest model for imitation, and perhaps no earlier epoch had created
handsomer likenesses of men and women than would now be produced by
evangelical artists.

To their own surprise, during this conversation they had reached the
Hiltner house, and Erasmus invited his friend to come to his room and
over a glass of wine answer him, as he had had the last word. But Wolf
had already drunk at his own home more of the fiery Wurzburg from the
precentor's cellar than usual. Besides, much as he still had to say in
reply to Erasmus, the sensible young man deemed it advisable to avoid the
syndic's house for the present. The confessor's suspicion had been
aroused, and De Soto was a Dominican, who certainly did not stand far
from the Holy Inquisition.

Therefore while Erasmus, with burning head and great excitement, was
still urging his friend to come in, Wolf unexpectedly bade him a hasty
and resolute farewell.

CHAPTER XXIII.

Wolf left the Hiltner house behind him with the feeling that he had
upheld the cause of his Church against the learned opponent to the best
of his ability, and had not been defeated. Yet he was not entirely
satisfied. In former years he had read the Hutten dialogues, and, though
he disapproved of their assaults upon the Holy Father in Rome, he had
warmly sympathized with the fiery knight's love for his native land.

Far as, at the court of Charles, the German ranked below the
Netherlander, the Spaniard, and the Italian, Wolf was proud of being a
German, and it vexed him that he had not at least made the attempt to
repel the theologian's charge that the Catholic, to whom the authority of
Rome was the highest, would be inferior to the Protestant in patriotism.

But he would have succeeded no better in convincing Erasmus than the
learned theologians who, at the Emperor's instance, had held an earnest
religious discussion in Ratisbon a short time before, had succeeded in
arriving at even a remote understanding.

As he reached the Haidplatz new questions of closer interest were casting
these of supreme importance into the shade.

He was to enter his home directly, and then the woman whom he loved would
rest above him, and alo