ong to go back to the traditions
of our Roman fathers,--who were men of cleanly and honorable lives and
of heroic deeds, scorning bribery and deceit. They honored God by noble
lives, little as they knew of Him. But these men are a shame to the
mothers that bore them."

"You speak too truly, my son," said the monk. "Alas! the creation
groaneth and travaileth in pain with these things. Many a time and oft
have I seen our master groaning and wrestling with God on this account.
For it is to small purpose that we have gone through Italy preaching and
stirring up the people to more holy lives, when from the very hill of
Zion, the height of the sanctuary, come down these streams of pollution.
It seems as if the time had come that the world could bear it no
longer."

"Well, if it come to the trial of the sword, as come it must," said the
cavalier, "say to your master that Agostino Sarelli has a band of one
hundred tried men and an impregnable fastness in the mountains, where he
may take refuge, and where they will gladly hear the Word of God from
pure lips. They call us robbers,--us who have gone out from the assembly
of robbers, that we might lead honest and cleanly lives. There is not
one among us that hath not lost houses, lands, brothers, parents,
children, or friends, through their treacherous cruelty. There be those
whose wives and sisters have been forced into the Borgia harem; there be
those whose children have been tortured before their eyes,--those who
have seen the fairest and dearest slaughtered by these hell-hounds, who
yet sit in the seat of the Lord and give decrees in the name of Christ.
Is there a God? If there be, why is He silent?"

"Yea, my son, there is a God," said the monk; "but His ways are not as
ours. A thousand years in His sight are but as yesterday, as a watch in
the night. He shall come, and shall not keep silence."

"Perhaps you do not know, father," said the young man, "that I, too,
am excommunicated. I am excommunicated, because, Caesar Borgia having
killed my oldest brother, and dishonored and slain my sister, and seized
on all our possessions, and the Pope having protected and confirmed him
therein, I declare the Pope to be not of God, but of the Devil. I will
not submit to him, nor be ruled by him; and I and my fellows will make
good our mountains against him and his crew with such right arms as the
good Lord hath given us."

"The Lord be with you, my son!" said the monk; "and the Lord b