'"--[Virgil, Aeneid, xi. 837.]

"Because conflict between Christians always gives me pain," replied the
abbot.

But here Dr. Eberbach impetuously broke in upon the conversation:

"For the sake of a fair woman Ilion suffered unspeakable tortures. But to
us a single song of Homer is worth more than all these Hebrew writings.
And yet a Trojan war of the intellect has been kindled concerning them.
Here freedom of investigation, yonder with Hoogstraten and Tungern,
fettering of the mind. Among us, the ardent yearning to hold aloft the
new light which the revival of learning is kindling, yonder superior
force is struggling to extinguish it. Here the rule of the thinking mind,
in whose scales reason and counter-argument decide the matter; among the
Cologne people it is the Grand Inquisitor's jailers, chains, dungeons,
and the stake."

"They will not go so far," replied the abbot soothingly. "True, both the
front and the back stairs are open to the Dominicans in Rome."

"Yet where should humanism find more zealous friends than in that very
place, among the heads of the Church?" asked Dr. Peutinger. "From the
Tiber, I hope----"

Here he paused, for the new guest who had just entered the room attracted
his attention also. The landlord of The Blue Pike respectfully preceded
him and ushered him directly to the Nuremberg party, while he requested
the Dominican monks who accompanied him to wait.

The late arrival was Prof. Arnold von Tungern, dean of the theological
faculty at the University of Cologne. This gentleman had just been
mentioned with the greatest aversion at the table he was now approaching,
and his arrogant manner did little to lessen it.

Nevertheless, his position compelled the Nuremberg dignitaries to invite
him to share their meal, which was now drawing to a close. The Cologne
theologian accepted the courtesy with a patronizing gesture, as if it
were a matter of course. Nay, after he had taken his seat, he ordered the
landlord, as if he were the master, to see that this and that thing in
the kitchen was not forgotten.

Unwelcome as his presence doubtless was to his table companions, as
sympathizers with Reuchlin and other innovators, well as he doubtless
remembered their scornful attacks upon his Latin--he was a man to
maintain his place. So, with boastful self-conceit, allowing no one else
an opportunity to speak, he at once began to complain of the fatigues of
the journey and to mention, with tiresome de