Lutetia

“ Julian's successors, Valentinian and Gratian, reversed his policy but shared his love for the fair city on the Seine, and spent some winters there. Lutetia had now become a rich and cultured Gallo-Roman city. [Pg 20]
CHAPTER II
The Barbarian Invasions—St. Genevieve—The Conversion of Clovis—The Merovingian Dynasty
In the Prologue to Faust, the Lord of Heaven justifies the existence of the restless, goading spirit of evil by the fact that man's activity is all too prone to flag,—
"Er liebt sich bald die unbedingte Ruh." [18]
As with men so with empires: riches and inaction are hard to bear. ”

“ Fielden; “for truth is the best policy, after all. Still, it’s scarce my business to meddle; and if it were not for Susan—Well, well, I must think of it, and pray Heaven to direct me.”
This conference suffices to explain to the reader the stage to which the history of Lucretia had arrived. Willingly we pass over what it were scarcely possible to describe,—her first shock at the fall from the expectations of her life; fortune, rank, and what she valued more than either, power, crushed at a blow. ”

“ Now when I am dead, rest and sleep do you also pray. I will die before this calamity and misery come upon Germany." Scarcely had Luther closed his eyes when the emperor and the Pope thought the time had come again to strengthen popery and oppress the Lutheran doctrine with the sword, aye, completely to destroy it. The emperor accused the Lutheran princes of disobedience because they would not submit to the Edict of Augsburg, and declared the ban of the empire against them. ”

“ In the wondrous corruption to which her mind had descended, thus murmured Lucretia. Intellect had been so long made her sole god that the very monster of history was lifted to her reverence by his ruthless intellect alone,—lifted in that mood of feverish excitement when conscience, often less silenced, lay crushed, under the load of the deed to come, into an example and a guide.
Though at times, when looking back, oppressed by the blackest despair, no remorse of the past ever weakened those nerves when the Hour called up its demon, and the Will ruled the rest of the human being as a machine. ”

“ No System Sovereign was ever more ardently loved or more widespreadly honored and respected. In justice and mercy this new ruler set the turbulent system in order while he painstakingly ministered to all his subjects, even offering his rebellious predecessor the privilege of sharing the system throne of authority if he would only apologize to Immanuel for his indiscretions. But Lutentia spurned these overtures of mercy, well knowing that this new and strange System Sovereign was none other than Michael, the very universe ruler whom he had so recently defied. ”

“ Now, while Luther was crawling up these steps, hoping in this way to reconcile God and atone for his sins, it seemed to him as if a voice of thunder was crying in his ears, "The just shall live by his faith!" Thus this passage more and more became the light which revealed to him the true way to heaven. This was his opinion of the so-called Holy City: "No one believes what villainy and outrageous sins and vices are practiced at Rome. You can convince no one that such great abominations occur there, if he has not seen and heard and experienced it himself." ”

“ Luther needed God to stand by him, for in all that great gathering he could count on few assured friends. The princes of the empire were resolved that he should have fair play, but they were little inclined to favour further a disturber of the public peace. The Diet sate in the Bishop's palace, and the next evening Luther appeared. The presence in which he found himself would have tried the nerves of the bravest of men: the Emperor, sternly hostile, with his retinue of Spanish priests and nobles ”

“ As he spoke, great changes had passed over Lucretia’s countenance. At first it was the flash of conviction, then the stunned shock of horror; now she rose, rose to her full height, and there was a livid and deadly light in her eyes,—the light of conscious courage and power and revenge. “Fool,” she muttered, “with all his craft! Fool, fool! As if, in the war of household perfidy, the woman did not always conquer! Man’s only chance is to be mailed in honour.”
“But,” said Gabriel, overhearing her, “but you do not remember what it is. There is nothing you can see and guard against. ”

“ Stung, maddened by the scorn of himself, his blood fired into juster indignation by her scoff at his creed, he lost all self-possession and struck her to the ground. In the midst of shame and dread at disclosure of his violence, which succeeded the act so provoked, he was not less relieved than amazed when Lucretia, rising slowly, laid her hand gently on his arm and said, "Repent not, it is passed; fear not, I will be silent! Come, you are the stronger,—you prevail. ”

“ Like distant rolling thunder the mighty sentences echoed out into the lands and announced to Rome the storm that was brewing in Germany against popery. Luther had no idea that God had destined them to accomplish such great things. For innumerable souls they were as the sun rising after a long and anxious night. They rejoiced as we rejoice at the light of day; for they saw that in the light of this doctrine they could attain to that peace with God and with their conscience which they had sought in vain with painful toiling in the commandments of the Roman church. ”

“ But I see that you are a young and vigorous man. Besides, you have a large following, for on my journey I made inquiries to discover what the people thought of you, and I noticed so much that where there is one on the Pope's side there are three on yours against the Pope. If I had an army of 25,000 men I would not undertake to carry you out of Germany!" With tears he begged Luther to help in restoring peace. Luther consented to drop the controversy if his opponents would do the same. ”

“ I show that I do so, when I repair my harshness to my poor sister, and leave both her children the same provision. And if you exceed what I have done for Lucretia, unless, on more dispassionate consideration than I can give, you conscientiously think me wrong, you insult my memory—and impugn my justice. Be it in this as your conscience dictates; but I entreat, I adjure, I command, at least that you never knowingly admit by a hearth, hitherto sacred to unblemished truth and honour, a person who has desecrated it with treason. As gentleman to gentleman, I impose on you this solemn injunction. ”

“ Moreover there are here, and daily doth come into our most famous kingdom, divers strangers from beyond the seas, which aver before our own faces, that we have no true method of application or fingering of the Lute.
Now if these gallant young Lutenists be such as they would have the world believe (and of which I make no doubt) let them remember that their skill lieth not in their fingers' ends. Cucullus non facit monachum [ [Pg 647] A hood does not make a monk] . I wish for the honour, therefore, and general benefit of our country, that they would undertake the defence of their Lute profession ”

“ Far different is the picture of political life impressed upon us by Rutilius. His voice is assuredly not that of a partisan of a discredited and overborne faction. We see by the aid of his poem a senate at Rome composed of past office-holders, the majority of whom were certainly pagan still. We discern a Christian section whose Christianity was political rather than religious, who were Romans first and Christians afterwards, whom a new breeze in politics might easily have wafted back to the old religion. Between these two sections the broad old Roman toleration reigns. ”

“ She was a good Methodist and there was no doubt in her mind that Providence was responsible. When she rose to testify in prayer-meeting she always mentioned her “cross” and everybody knew that the cross was Luther. She carried him, but it is no more than fair to say that she didn't provide him with cushions. She never let him forget that he was a steerage passenger. However, Lute was well upholstered with philosophy, of a kind, and, so long as he didn't have to work his passage, was happy, even if the voyage was a rather rough one. ”

“ As a statesman, he is at pains to avoid offending those politic Christian senators over whom pride in their country had at least as great power as attachment to their new religion. Only once or twice does Rutilius speak directly of Christianity, and then only to attack the monks, whom the temporal authorities had hardly as yet recognized, and whom, indeed, only a short time before, a Christian emperor had forced b thousands into the ranks of his army. ”

“ THE SOUL OF THE MAN WHO SANK THE LUSITANIA
The crowning horror of Germany's barbarities came with the sinking of the Lusitania. Perhaps nothing less shocking could have made us see how much less cruel Nature is at her worst than man in his madness may be. ”

“ Rutilius expressed great indignation at all this, and said, that banishment, nay death itself, was preferable to such meannesses. nay, he not only said it, but proved by his practice, that he thought as he spoke; for, (though you know it,) he was a mirror of innocence, and though no man in Rome had cleaner hands, or a purer heart, he not only refused to be a suppliant to his judges, but to make use of any ornament or liberty in his defence, other than the simple language of truth. ”

“ Ulrich von Hutten, on the other hand, warmly espoused Luther's cause as that of a German patriot and an opponent of Roman tyranny, intrigue, and oppression. "Let us defend our freedom," he wrote, "and liberate the long enslaved fatherland. We have God on our side, and if God be with us, who can be against us?" Hutten enlisted the interest of some of the other knights, who offered to defend Luther should the churchmen attack him, and invited him to take refuge in their castles. ”

“ Catching bloom from the roses? You have the prettiest shade of colour,—just enough; not a hue too much. And there is Sir Miles’s valet gone to the rectory, and the fat footman puffing away towards the village, and I, like a faithful warden, from my post at the castle, all looking out for the truant.”
“But who wants me, cousin?” said Lucretia, with the full blaze of her rare and captivating smile.
“The knight of Laughton confessedly wants thee, O damsel! The knight of the Bleeding Heart may want thee more,—dare he own it?” ”

“ Do not some Catholic professors even begin to dogmatize and dispute the authority of the holy see?"
"We rejoice at the consoling fact that Catholic savants themselves break the fetters with which Rome's infallibility has bound in adamantine chains the human mind!" cried Lutz with enthusiasm.
"It appears strange to me when young men—scarcely escaped from the school, and boasting of all modern knowledge—cast aside as old, worthless rubbish what great minds of past ages have deeply pondered. The see of Rome and its dogmas have ruled the world for eighteen hundred years. ”

“ Was it possible that Lucretia had not often been menaced, as the direst evil that could befall her, with her uncle’s displeasure; that long before she could be sensible of mere worldly loss or profit, she was not impressed with a vague sense of Sir Miles’s power over her fate,—nay, when trampling, in childish wrath and scorn, upon some menial’s irritable feelings, was it possible that she had not been told that, but for Sir Miles, she would be little better than a servant herself? Be this as it may, all weakness is prone to dissimulate ”

“ All that there is in the German idea was expressed in the Lusitania Massacre, it was expressed in the killing of women and children, innocent of all offense, entitled to all protection as helpless, unoffending, as the children of a race not at war, at least entitled to immunity which hitherto was reckoned the right of women and children, neutral or belligerent.
The war that is being fought in Europe is a war for civilization. The battle of Great Britain, of France, of Russia, is our battle. ”

“ And now the Lusitania came with a fresh shock as an iterated example of German state policy. It proclaimed glaringly to the eyes of all men what the Teutonic thing is, what it means to the world. The Latin has been cruel and bloody in his deeds, like all men, but he has never made a cult of inhumanity, never justified it as a principle of statecraft. Italians, prone to hate as to love, prone especially to hate the Teuton, those aliens who have lusted after their richness and beauty all these centuries, felt the Lusitania murders to the depths of their souls. ”

“ That was what compelled him to enter the convent. The lurid fires of Hell and the pale shades of purgatory which are the constant background to Dante's Paradise were always present to the mind of Luther from boyhood. Could he escape the one and win the other if he remained in the world? He doubted it and entered the convent.
The Order of monks which Lutjier selected was the Augustinian Eremites. Their history was somewhat curious. Originally they had been formed out of the numerous hermits who lived solitary religious lives throughout Italy and Germany. ”

“ Endowed with great physical strength, gifted with a marvellous memory and a complete mastery of the German language, as inspiring in the pulpit or on the platform as he was with his pen, regardless of nice limitations or even of truth when he wished to strike down an opponent or to arouse the enthusiasm of a mob, equally at home with princes in the drawing-room as with peasants in a tavern —Luther was an ideal demagogue to head a semi-religious, semi-social revolt. ”

“ Epistle of St. Paul to the Galatians, upon which he was at that time engaged. [751]
Such little touches often reveal the spiritual atmosphere in which a man moves, and by which he is influenced, quite as well as more important matters.
The frightful accusations which Luther brings forward in his Commentary on Romans against the state of morals in Rome belong to a somewhat earlier period; their tone is such as to lead one to fear the worst for the author’s submission to the highest authorities in the Church. ”