Rome could be
vindicated at least by the dagger.

But this, too, failed. The elector heard what was intended. A party of
horse, disguised as banditti, waylaid the Reformer upon the road, and
carried him off to the castle of Wartburg, where he remained out of
harm's way till the general rising of Germany placed him beyond the
reach of danger.

At Wartburg for the present evening we leave him.

The Emperor Charles and Luther never met again. The monks of Yuste, who
watched on the deathbed of Charles, reported that at the last hour he
repented that he had kept his word, and reproached himself for having
allowed the arch-heretic to escape from his hands.

It is possible that, when the candle of life was burning low, and spirit
and flesh were failing together, and the air of the sick room was thick
and close with the presence of the angel of death, the nobler nature of
the emperor might have yielded to the influences which were around him.
His confessor might have thrust into his lips the words which he so
wished to hear.

But Charles the Fifth, though a Catholic always, was a Catholic of the
old grand type, to whom creed and dogmas were but the robe of a regal
humanity. Another story is told of Charles--an authentic story this
one--which makes me think that the monks of Yuste mistook or maligned
him. Six and twenty years after this scene at Worms, when the then
dawning heresy had become broad day; when Luther had gone to his
rest--and there had gathered about his name the hate which mean men feel
for an enemy who has proved too strong for them--a passing vicissitude
in the struggle brought the emperor at the head of his army to
Wittenberg.

The vengeance which the monks could not inflict upon him in life, they
proposed to wreak upon his bones.

The emperor desired to be conducted to Luther's tomb; and as he stood
gazing at it, full of many thoughts, some one suggested that the body
should be taken up and burnt at the stake in the Market Place.

There was nothing unusual in the proposal; it was the common practice of
the Catholic Church with the remains of heretics who were held unworthy
to be left in repose in hallowed ground. There was scarcely, perhaps,
another Catholic prince who would have hesitated to comply. But Charles
was one of nature's gentlemen; he answered, 'I war not with the dead.'

LECTURE III.

We have now entered upon the movement which broke the power of the
Papacy--which swept Germany, Swe