of it? How can a sagacious
man plunge into such annoyances on its account?"

"Because the excess of liberty which you gentlemen grant to the human
intellect blinds him," observed the abbot. "His learning would throw the
doors wide open to heresy. The Scriptures are true. On them Tungern and
Kollin, whom you mention, rely. In the original Hebrew text they will be
given up to every one who wishes to seek an interpretation----"

"Then a new bridge will be built for truth," declared the little
Thuringian with flashing eyes.

"The Cologne theologians hold a different opinion," replied the abbot.

"Because the Grand Inquisitor and his followers--Tungern, Kollin, and
whatever the rest may be called--are concerned about some thing very
different from the noblest daughter of Heaven," said Lienhard Groland,
and the other gentlemen assented. "You yourself, my lord abbot, admitted
to me on the ride here that it angered you, too, to see the Cologne
Dominicans pursue the noble scholar 'with such fierce hatred and bitter
stings.'"--[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 arriva