Chapter XXVI: We Enter Worms

On the fifteenth of April, 1521, we reached Oppenheim, having crossed the Rhine, and being now only one stage from Worms. Time was pressing. On the sixteenth the safe-conduct expired and any failure to reach the Diet would leave Luther far from his sheltering Saxony, and in the very claws of the adversary. The shouting, the cheering, the perpetual “vivats” from the multitudes had been well, but I knew how much the fair words and sympathies of women, peasants, and students were worth against a file of imperial lanz-knechts despatched to seize their hero. Destruction seemed alike before and behind us now, but Dr. Martin had chosen the way, and I was past urging “turn back.” Yet many a good friend was not so convinced as was I that God was leading us, and at Oppenheim came a warning that would have made a very Hannibal quail.

We were in the road winding up the steep crags toward the little city when a messenger in the Elector of Saxony’s livery rode up to us, and with him a Dominican friar, one Martin Bucer, a trusty friend and preacher of the Cause. I will not repeat all that they said; enough that they brought a letter from Spalatin, the Elector’s own confessor, warning against going any farther. All kinds of perils lurked at Worms. Aleander, the Papal Legate, was raging that “Luther had enough heresy in him to warrant burning a hundred thousand,” and that his following was the offscouring of Germany. As for the safe-conduct, let Luther remember Hus’s fate, and let him heed also the rumor[11] that the very influential Cardinal of Tortosa, the Emperor’s tutor, had written to his one-time pupil, urging earnestly “to hand the fellow over to the Pope for his deserts.”

“What, then, is it advised that Dr. Luther do?” I asked, whereat Bucer answered that Von Sickengen’s formidable castle, the Ebernburg, was not far off. Let him take refuge there, and negotiate at leisure. I sat in my saddle moodily. The advice seemed good, the peril undoubted, yet I knew that if my master turned aside from Worms when almost at its portal his name and fame were marred through all Germany. But while Amsdorf and I were silent, Dr. Martin dispensed with our feeble wisdom. He shot his words right into the face of the courier.

“Von Sickengen is a noble ritter. I thank him for his proffer. But he lives by the sword and will die by the sword. God’s cause can prosper without him. And as for me, _though there be as many devils in Worms as there are tiles on the housetops, yet will I go there_. Drive onward.”

That ended the debate. I knew that come good or come evil we would see Luther at Cæsar’s judgment seat. It was with a mind very full of thoughts that I rode out of Oppenheim the next morning. A marvellous spring day was upon us. The little brooks and ditches were full of water running merrily. One could almost hear the sap oozing in the trees. The buds were just bursting, and all the boughs were in their young green feather. In the fields the red-kerchiefed peasant girls sang as they plied the mattocks or followed the plough, and overhead in the limpid sky the larks sang back to them. I could see that Dr. Martin was taking a delight nigh childish in the beauty of the hour.

“What a glorious day,” he kept saying with simplicity, “and how rarely the birds sing. Ah! If we could count up the great charge God is at, only to maintain the birds and other creatures. Verily it must cost Him more than all the revenues of the King of France. If only I understood how many gulden it takes to sustain the larks, would I not be an incomparable master of theology!”

As for myself, however, my thoughts were wandering not a little, even from my master and the Cause. That morning a letter, carefully sealed, had been put in my hands by Gunter, with the curt remark that “later if I wished he would tell how Trude had gotten it to him.” Full secretly had I read, and thus it ran:--

“My aunt goes to Worms on business to the Pope’s legate touching
our order. Prompted by some saint she declares she will take me
as her companion. My brother also rides with us. Remember you are
my knight, and wear my gage. May God keep us.”

No name, no address. Both had been utterly needless. I hid the letter in my bosom, but took it thence to kiss the writing a hundred times. At last I had to conjure myself roundly to “play not the love-lorn squire, but play the man.” And I plucked the letter forth no more. But you will not blame me if I did not spend all my thoughts on how to circumvent Monsignore Aleander at Worms.

“You, too, find this fine day makes you merry, Graf Walter,” said Luther once during the morning ride, and later I discovered that he had more than half divined the cause of my lightened spirits.

* * * * *

It was about noon, long after the frowning battlements, the red-roofed steep houses, and the vast, many towered minster of Worms, had been before our view, that the trumpeter above the gate blew boldly on his horn,--signal to all the crowded city that the man who had set all Germany by the ears had come to face his fate. Our little cavalcade rolled over the drawbridge and into the shadow of the gatehouse; Deutschland rode first, shaking out his great banner, then the wagon with Luther and his three comrades, lastly myself with some few friendly ritters who had galloped out from Worms to meet us. It was dinner time, but by some art magic the tall gabled houses poured out their thousands into the busy street. Honorable quarters had been reserved for us at the House of the Knights of St. John, where the residence of the Saxon Elector would be close at hand. So great was the multitude Deutschland must needs lay about him with his baton to win us a way.

As I rode onward slowly, I could but tell myself that all the world had rushed together here for the Diet; save as we were privileged guests I doubt if we could ever have hired lodgings. The streets were full of blond Mecklinburgers and Pomeranians, dark Rhinelanders, dapper-dressed Frenchmen, olive-faced Spaniards, small Italians. Knights and clowns, peasants, burghers, and clerics were all elbowing indiscriminately to get their first glance of “_him_,” whether they called the newcomer saint or heresiarch. I saw an Italian valet hanging close at our heels, and I was not surprised later to learn that he was a servant of Aleander the Legate, sent to bring his master particular word of the aspect of “Mahomet.” Surely if Luther’s courage did not fail him, if he had a true word to say at Worms, he could speak it so loud here that he could be heard by all the earth!

At the House of the Knights there did not lack a welcome from friends and an abundance of wordy counsel. Two of the Saxon Electors’ intimate advisers were lodged at the same place. A good dozen of us sat down to dinner together. There were a thousand things to say,--what the Emperor thought, what each Elector thought, what the delegates of the Free Cities thought, what the Pope’s legates demanded, what Franz von Sickengen had threatened, what would be the probable procedure to-morrow, etc., _ad infinitum_. And through it all I could see Dr. Martin smiling sweetly yet soberly, answering with a nod here, a brief word there, and keeping his own counsel.

“Has he not determined? Is he resolved to retract?” muttered Von Thun the Counsellor in my ear half testily. “Surely he has not made all this journey without some fixed intention?”

To which I could only answer, “He has never committed himself to me.”

“Pest take the man,” grumbled the testy though friendly politician; “of all accursed things it is to be a theologian. ‘If you believe so, I will concede so,’ they say, when what the Emperor will want is a clear answer ‘_Sic_’ or ‘_Non_.’ Can we not make him understand?”

“Noble and excellent Counsellor,” answered I with assurance, “I do not know what Dr. Luther will say, but I do know that he will give such answer as will not leave you, me, nor any man in the world, in doubt as to his meaning.”

I could do no more for my master that day. Events must shape their course for a little. If there was more service which I could render, it would come later when Cæsar had spoken. Leaving Luther in the hands of his overzealous friends, I went to my own chambers, caused Andrea to change my dress so that I would appear merely as an inconspicuous ritter, and then went out unattended into the buzzing streets. Never was there a more polyglot crowd even by the Venetian Rialto. Spanish pikemen of the Imperial guard were declaiming in loud Castilian against the insipidity of German wines; there were a goodly number of giant-tall Swiss mercenaries in their bright, party-colored clothes and great feathery-set hats, and ecclesiastics swarmed of every rank, condition, and order. Mountebanks and hucksters of all kinds of cheap and cheating wares, seemed everywhere, and many none too prudish women. Carefree for the time, I wandered onward, catching snatches of conversation, much amused momentarily by a grave debate betwixt a Fleming and a Swabian as to whether Luther was able to fly and to make himself invisible by the black art, yet often touched by the manifest love and reverence with which vast numbers seemed to mention my master’s name.

Knowing little of the winding streets, I let myself wander ever onward, guided by fancy, until at last I was under the shadow of the vast cathedral, and I saw sentries pacing with their halberds before the portals of the wall around the bishop’s palace. Within I knew lodged the Emperor and the Papal legates. I might have announced my rank and demanded admission, but I was in no mood for playing the courtier, and I was turning away to find what else might amuse me in the city, when I came face to face with an Italian in a livery I knew like my own, blue and gold cut after the manner of the Forlis. Involuntarily I must have stopped and stared at him, the more so as his face was familiar, in an uncertain way, and he, seemingly amazed, also stood and gazed at me curiously, then recovering his wits more nimbly than I, swept off his biretta with a profound bow.

“Allow me to assure you, Eccellenza,” spoke he in Italian, “that I am now as always very devotedly at your service.”

“Diavolo! fellow,” I answered, wholly aback. “I do not have the joy of your acquaintance.”

“The Conte di Palaestro does not remember then a certain evening at the Vatican four years ago, the last evening I believe your Nobility spent in Rome for some time, when it was my great and grievous misfortune to be obliged, my own humble head being in jeopardy--”

“Good heavens, rascal,” cried I, my wits at last serving me; “you are Ettore Orosi, the bravo!”

He bowed again with agile grace.

“Ettore Orosi, at that time a humble cavaliere of fortune, but now, praised be Santa Maria di Fiesoli, a gentleman servitor in the household of the Cardinal of Forli and that incomparable lady, Madonna Marianna.”

“Forli, Marianna, are they here in Worms?”

“They arrived at the court three days since, Eccellenza, on an unofficial mission from His Holiness. It was at once reported at the palace that you were in the company of that much-debated friar, Signor Lutherio, and Madonna Marianna straightway commissioned me to ascertain your lodging place, and how she might communicate with you. You see I have been unexpectedly fortunate.”

I own that for once in my life I was utterly at a loss what to do or to answer.

Both Marianna and Ilsa were to be in Worms!

FOOTNOTES:

[11] Quite authenticated by history.--EDITOR.