Chapter XXVIII: Behold, He Prayeth

On the afternoon of the 17th of April, Luther was conducted before the Diet to answer to the charges of heresy. The morning was passed by my master very calmly, reading, writing, and actually going from his lodgings to visit, console, and administer the sacrament to a sick Saxon knight. It was four o’clock in the afternoon when the peasant-born friar, who had set knights, bishops, electors by the ears, with cardinals, Pope, and Emperor to boot, was conducted before the assembled estates of the Holy Roman Empire. But of this first assembly, and all who were there and what passed, I omit the details, seeing that this audience before the Diet was but the prelude to the real ordeal.

Of all the friends and foes who looked so curiously on him that day, I think all but a few were sorely amazed at his conduct. “He will recant,” or “He will stand firm,”--one saying or the other had been on every tongue. But I, and one or two more, who had communed with him often, were not so surprised. Well did we understand how Martin Luther looked upon this audience as the crisis of his life, and, trusting none the less in heaven, was not the least resolved to blunder through lack of temporal circumspection and worldly wisdom. So when the “Official General,” who conducted the interrogations for the Emperor, having put the preliminary questions, asked if he would repudiate or withdraw his books alleged heretical, and when all ears were bent for a sturdy “yea” or “nay,” on the contrary, Luther in mild voice answered that the matter was one of great moment and touched upon “the salvation of souls.” If he spoke without due consideration he might be over-bold, run into sore peril, and incur God’s wrath; therefore he entreated time for deliberation, “that he might answer the interrogation without injury to the Divine Word, or peril to his own soul.”

There was a buzz among the princes, a whispering betwixt the Emperor and Aleander, the lowering Papal legate. With some asperity the Imperial spokesman made answer that Luther surely knew wherefore he had been summoned and what might be asked of him; nevertheless, that he might have fair play, four-and-twenty hours were given him. Then he must be ready with his answer.

After that came adjournment and more whisperings, and I knew that Luther had neither lost a friend nor conciliated an enemy. Almost as I was passing out I heard the rumor that Charles had said “This man will never make a heretic of me.” But the multitude were otherwise minded. A great cheering throng followed us back to our lodgings, there were _vivats_ and _bravoes_, and once a shrill woman’s voice, “Blessed is the womb that bare thee!” Best of all, soon after our coming to the house of the Knights, the cortège of no less a person than the mighty Landgraf von Hessen himself halted before it, and youthful Prince Philip dismounted to wring my master’s hand, and to say in parting, “Dear Doctor, if you are in the right, so may the Lord God help you.”

Then the darkness sent the crowds away, and even the officious Saxon councillors had the grace to refrain from thrusting in their presence.

“Well,” complained one busy body, “your Wittenberg friar may be a mighty theologian, and well able to refute a whole Church Council, but has he no pity on us all? Must Diet and Emperor twirl their thumbs with curiosity whilst he makes up his mind?”

“Be graciously patient, noble Geheimrat,” spoke I, bowing him toward the door; “you will be amply satisfied on the morrow.”

“Heaven grant it,” he fumed, going out, and I turned back into the room where, very characteristically, my master was bent over the broad table, a candle at either elbow. He wrote rapidly, but soon threw down the sheet so that Amsdorf and myself could read the broad, sprawling hand. It was a letter to Guspianus, a literary friend in Vienna, in which he told briefly the events of the day, and then clearly written at the end stood out these words, “_But I shall not withdraw a single jot, Christ helping me_!”

Amsdorf and I handed back the paper, having perused in silence.

“Ei! my friends,” cried Luther, leaning back in his chair, and stretching his great broad arms above his head, “have you nothing to say, no warnings, no prudence, like all these other good folk?”

Amsdorf looked at me, and seeing I was tongue-tied, answered:--

“Dear Doctor, we have long since committed you into God’s keeping. Wisdom and words we have not of our own.”

Luther arose, and without speaking a syllable, embraced us both silently,--the hearty warm embrace of an elder brother. His face twitched a little. We knew that his hour was come. Silently we returned the clasp and took our leave, realizing that for him solitude was now the truest refreshment. As I passed out I could see his dark figure outlined against the candle-light, and already unconscious of our hearing he was repeating the words of Ezekiel of old.

“Behold I the Lord have made thy face strong against their faces, and thy forehead strong against their foreheads; as an adamant harder than flint, have I made thy forehead. Fear them not, neither be dismayed.”

“Amsdorf,” spoke I, my own heart welling over, “though we live a thousand years we shall not hear or see things greater than shall come to pass to-morrow.”

“Can you sleep to-night?” he asked.

“Impossible,” I returned, and we sat down together in our own chamber, and tried desperately to while away the hours by a game of chess. Once or twice I listened at Dr. Luther’s door. Once I heard him repeating the Scripture, once I heard the notes of his lute touched softly, to some gentle wailing lay of his Saxon hills, and I knew that he was trying, as so often, “to rout the devil” with music.

The clock struck midnight when our game was disturbed by a gentle knock at our door.

“May I enter, Eccellenza?” Andrea was asking, and glided in before I could answer “yes.”

He had his stiletto drawn, and his eyes were gleaming like jet beads. Instantly I sprang to my feet, whipping out my own rapier.

“Danger?” I demanded.

“Si, Signore. Great danger to Messere Luther. Heretic he may be, I do not know,” he crossed himself, “but he is your friend. That is enough for Andrea. The Conte has seen Ettore Orosi?”

“A thousand fiends, yes!”

“Then believe me, Ettore Orosi and four others like him, an Italian, with three Germans,--greasy oafs,--are to be under Dottore Luther’s window ere many minutes. And then--prut!”

“Fellow, fellow,” cried I, “how did you know this? It is impossible that the Pope’s legates should stoop to such a deed even against a heretic. The Emperor’s wrath would be terrible.”

“His Holiness’s legates? oh, no, Signore! Their pious hands will be very clean. Ettore Orosi and his band do this independently, from pure love of Holy Church. Perhaps there may be temporal rewards for their zeal; but these will be later. Yet believe me, it has not been for nothing Andrea has been hanging around the palace kitchens all the evening, and making himself friendly to the comely scullery maids.”

“We must summon help,” spoke Amsdorf with a hand upon my arm.

“Help?” I replied, “with Gunter and Adolf within reach, with Andrea here, and you and I hale and strong? Not so. If Ettore Orosi desires a swift road to hell, we are well able to give him the post-horses.”

“At least, let me caution Dr. Luther,” and he started for the inner door, but I detained him.

“Dr. Luther has battles enough to fight to-night, without this one. We will fight it for him. Come.”

Already the indefatigable Andrea had roused my two watch dogs. Adolf and Gunter came in, cursing softly, but with their weapons, and we held a hasty council-of-war. The information which Andrea had wormed out of an over-talkative serving-maid gave no clear notion of the nature of the attack, but we could guess its method. To penetrate to the apartments of Dr. Luther from the side of the house fronting upon the street would necessitate forcing several well-barred doors, and was to the last degree impossible. But on the other side his windows opened upon a small garden surrounded by a wall readily scaled by active men, and behind this wall ran a dark narrow alley giving the easiest imaginable access.

Our deliberations were brief and effective. Leaving my second valet and Adolf’s nephew, a tall, burly Regensteiner, to guard the inner house, the rest of us took our way quietly by a back passage to the little garden where a few bushes in the corner made a sufficient covert against the wall. We were armed; even the pacific Amsdorf, who was no feeble man physically, had accepted a sabre and pistol. I was similarly accoutered, but Andrea insisted that I pull on my ring mail of proof, a splendid piece of Florentine armorer’s craft, that made me almost as impregnable as Achilles. Andrea himself had only his long stiletto, but I knew he could use that to greater effect than a Moor his scimitar. As for Gunter and Adolf, in addition to their ponderous swords, they tugged along arquebuses crammed with enough bullets to mow down a small army. In silence we took our stations; they whispered briefly as to our respective parts in the impending drama. Nothing was left but the most trying part of the ordeal, silence.

It was a weird enough and uncanny situation, after the glow of excitement began to wane, as I squatted in silence with my fellows on the damp chill earth, peering into the dark, and straining my ears for those first sounds which would betoken the assassins. The night was not absolutely black. Heavy banks of clouds moved across the moon, which occasionally peered out with a yellow half-orb, and sent a flying gleam of light across the garden wall. Again the shadows would become so black as to be almost impenetrable. The wind had shifted to the north and sang down the Rhine valley damp and chill, making me glad I had drawn an extra doublet over my ring shirt; and even then betwixt mingled cold and excitement I found my teeth a-chatter. Tall and dark above us loomed the lofty roofs and the dim outlines of the sombre chimneys. Once or twice I heard a clattering of the storks far up upon the eaves. We waited in cold, impatience, and discomfort, a time that seemed interminable. Presently the minster clock boomed “one,” and I heard the city watchman go clattering down the street with his staff and lantern, chanting his “Cover your fires and bar your doors,” as if any honest man would be awake at that hour to hear him. Other life there seemed nowhere, save in Dr. Luther’s apartment, where a rushlight and candles still burned, and where once or twice across the open lattice I saw his figure pass.

I was beginning to misdoubt the whole business, and to tell myself that it was folly to imagine that even Italians would be mad enough to outrage the German nation by trying to murder its hero on the eve of his crisis day. I was edging over to Andrea to seek again for his story, and to pin him down to some proof that we were waiting for anything more perilous than a fine ague, when Adolf--whose wise old ears were like a lynx’s--gave a low “hist!” Instantly I _knew_, rather than heard, that some one was moving down the alley behind us. We clinched our weapons, while I felt--thanks to my quickened heart beats--that every sense of cold had vanished. We heard feet approaching stealthily, I soon judged of a party of about five men.

The strangers were conversing in whispers, but it was long ere we caught a word. Right past us, with only the thin brick garden wall between, they went quietly as cats, but quite audibly. They actually passed beyond the house of the Knights, and I was thinking they were not our expected guests, when a warning word from one of the party halted the rest.

“Turn around,” commanded a muffled voice, “you have gone beyond the house.”

“You are sure it is this one?” asked another, in accents betraying a very poor command of German.

“Quite sure. I went down the alley three times to-day. I remember the chimneys. Dr. Luther’s chambers are on the first floor, directly against the garden.”

“_Buono!_ Signore,” spoke the non-German again, and I surely recognized Orosi, “then it is over the wall and into the house. Ecco! I will display to you the deed of a real virtuoso, of a true son of Italy. Your clumsy Tedesci shall behold and admire!”

“We will admire you on the gallows, you long-tongued magpie,” growled the other, “if you do not keep a quieter tongue, or I, Hans Lange, am no prophet. I am well paid for this task, or I would drop it even now. Quick now! _Frisch!_ Up and over; but silent as tombstones. There’s no time for mumbling.”

Adolf and Gunter had silently set the wheel-locks of their arquebuses, and now levelled at the crest of the wall, clearly visible, to take the first cutthroat as he should appear, but I knocked up their barrels.

“Let them in,” I muttered; “all are then at our mercy.”

In an instant a tall figure stood on the narrow parapet, then sprang boldly inside, landing on the slippery earth and sending the clods in our faces. A second, a third, a fourth, a fifth followed. The last two I knew clearly enough, by the flutter of their garments, were Italians, but the first three were Germans, Swabian lanz-knechts who would pawn their souls cheerfully for a little drink money. There they stood, those five men of blood, each doubtless with more sins than they had hairs. Before them, clearly in view, was the open lattice of Dr. Luther, the sill so low as to be easily scaled by a vigorous man; not fifteen feet away in the shadow of the wall stood we. Adolf and Gunter had covered the gang with their arquebuses, Amsdorf and I raised our pistols. All waited to follow my fire. Surely if ever heaven delivered Amalek into the hands of Israel, these five wild spirits were delivered into mine. And yet, though I knew God and man would justify me in instant execution, I hesitated. It was too much like slaying in cold blood. These creatures deserved the law of the chase as little as kites or wolves, but to mow them down before they had so much as regained their wind seemed an unknightly thing.

Lange, the tallest, burliest, and evidently the conductor of the gang, forgot his own prudence and swore a round oath over the slipperiness of the ground. Then I saw him stretch out an arm.

“Here is the window,” he announced; “see, the Reverend Doctor is still at his studies. We shall not need to awaken him.”

“No,” retorted Orosi, and I could imagine his grimace, “we are kind physicians, the noble heretic suffers from wakefulness, we will make him sleep, a fine draught, see!” And I caught the faint glint of a dagger.

“Curses on us,” growled one German, “for not bringing firearms. A shot through the window.”

“Would arouse the town, and get us torn in pieces. No, he was right. Cold steel is the best.” (Whom “he” was, I could never discover; possibly Forli, possibly some less ecclesiastical instigator.)

“Well, lads,” adjured Lange, softly, “swift and sure is our game. You have the cloak to cast over his head ere he can scream, then one good blow quells him.”

They moved together towards the window. Aiming as we were, no earthly power seemed able to save that band the moment the finger of the first touched the sill. But suddenly they halted, and instinctively our levelled tubes sank. Clearly outlined in the window we saw Dr. Luther.

For an instant I was disconcerted. We dared not fire from our present positions lest we strike our beloved friend. I was in mortal fear lest they spring in and stab him ere we could fly to the rescue. I was about to drop my pistol, draw my rapier, and charge to the attack, when Dr. Luther’s deep voice sounded out over that silent garden. Stranger words those cutthroats never had heard, I swear.

In the candle-light we could see Dr. Luther’s face upturned, his hands clasped and upraised.

“O God! God! God!” he spoke, and a quiver went through the murderous five.

“He’s muttering spells,” I caught from one lanz-knecht. “He’s devoting us all to perdition.”

“Don’t be a fool, Rudbert,” urged Lange, in a dangerously loud whisper. “We’ll have him the easier now.”

“Wait! Bad luck to strike while a man’s praying. Wait!”

In a flash of moonlight, I could see Orosi cross himself nervously. The whole band stirred. Had Dr. Luther’s thoughts been on anything mundane, he would have easily discovered them gazing up at him blank and spellbound.

“O God! God! God!” repeated Dr. Luther, still at the window, and we all, attackers and defenders, stood silently gazing at him, as do men in a catalepsy. Then at last his struggling emotions found their shape. He began to pray aloud, unconscious of everything around.

“Almighty and Eternal God, how is it there is but one thing to be seen upon earth! How the people open wide their mouths! How mean and insignificant is their trust in God! How tender and weak the flesh, and how mighty and active the devil, working through his apostles, and those wise in the world! How the world draws back the hand and snarls, as it runs the common course, the broad way down to hell! It regards only what is pretentious, powerful, great and mighty. If I should turn my eyes in that direction, it would be all over with me, the clock would strike the hour, and sentence would be passed. O God! O God! O God! Do Thou my God stand by me against all the world’s wisdom and reason.”

“Holy Mother help us,” I heard one lanz-knecht muttering, “you have brought us here to murder a saint. We are damned!”

“A wizard,” spoke Orosi, but I knew he had sheathed his dagger. Still sounded the voice of Luther.

“O my God do it! Thou must do it! Yea, Thou alone must do it! Not mine but Thine is the Cause. For my own self, I can do nothing against these great earthly lords. Peaceful days I would have chosen, and days afar from this sore strife. But Thine, O Lord, is this cause: righteous it is and eternal. Stand by me, then, Thou true and everlasting God! For in no man do I put my trust.” (By this time the five cutthroats had slunk back to the wall, and would have gone farther, save that they lacked strength and courage to scale it. Luther prayed on.) “All that is of the flesh and that savors of flesh is here of no account. God, O God, dost Thou not hear me? Art Thou verily dead? No. Thou canst not die, Thou art only hiding Thyself. Hast Thou chosen me for this work? I ask Thee how I may be sure of this, if it be Thy will, for I would never have thought in all my life of undertaking aught against such mighty lords.”

“Hence! Hence or we are damned forever!” The command came very audibly from Hans Lange. “There is not money enough in all Germany to make me do this devil’s work.” With one bound he cleared the wall, and vanished.

“O you Tedesci cowards,” snarled Orosi, “scared as old women!” but he was the second to leap. The others followed like a herd of goats. As for ourselves, we stood transfixed. It was beyond my power to break that spell, to nip the villains even as they were escaping from our hands. Dr. Luther’s voice rang out again, swelling with an indescribable emotion.

“Stand by me, O God, in the name of Thy dear Son, Jesus Christ, who shall be my defence and strength, yea my mighty fortress, through the might and strength of the Holy Ghost. Lord, where abidest Thou? Thou art my God: where art Thou? Come! come! I am ready to lay down my life patiently as a lamb. For the Cause is right and it is Thine, so I shall never be separated from Thee. Let all be done in Thy name! The world must leave my conscience unconstrained; and, although it should be full of devils, and my body, Thy creation, be rent into fragments, yet are Thy Word and Spirit good unto me. All this can befall only the body. The soul is Thine and belongs to Thee, and shall abide with Thee eternally. Amen. God help me. Amen.” [12]

Silence at last. Victorious in his wrestlings, comforted it seemed in his spirit, Dr. Luther’s form vanished from the window. The alley behind us was absolutely still. The five cutthroats had fled, routed by a mightier power than our steel and gunpowder, nor did they ever know how justly they had feared damnation as the price of lingering. After a while I let Adolf search the alley. It was empty. Lange, Orosi, and their confederates had not waited. There was nothing more to fear that night.

I kept one of my retainers on watch in the garden until dawn, but his presence was useless. Amsdorf and I returned to our chambers. Dr Luther’s light was still burning, but we heard nothing from him and did not disturb his meditations. With my mail shirt still about me and my weapons beside me I cast myself upon a hard oaken bench and caught a few hours sleep. In a troubled dream I thought myself a crusader toiling over the sand deserts of Palestine, a scanty company behind me, a clamorous host of the Infidel before. My lance was in rest. I was riding to the charge wholly conscious that in one brief moment of the delirium of battle my life would be snuffed out. Yet I was glad, rapturously glad. My blood was tingling, my senses alert. From my lance whipped the Regenstein banner. To my lips came the name of my lady, whose gage I would bear worthily to this last battle.

“Ilsa!” I cried; “for God, the Cause, and Ilsa!”

My own voice awoke me. The sun was streaming in at the diamond-paned windows. In the streets the noisy folk were passing. I rose and pressed my head.

“The day!” I repeated aloud. “O holy Heaven, I thank Thee I am permitted to live through this day.”

FOOTNOTES:

[12] The verbal accuracy of the prayer here quoted is vouched for by first-class tradition.--EDITOR.