dney by his friend Languet) he had
been to Rome, and seen (much to the scandal of good Protestants at home)
that "right good fellow," as Sidney calls him, who had not yet eaten
himself to death, the Pope for the time being. And he had seen the
frescos of the Vatican, and heard Palestrina preside as chapel-master
over the performance of his own music beneath the dome of St. Peter's,
and fallen half in love with those luscious strains, till he was
awakened from his dream by the recollection that beneath that same dome
had gone up thanksgivings to the God of heaven for those blood-stained
streets, and shrieking women, and heaps of insulted corpses, which he
had beheld in Paris on the night of St. Bartholomew. At last, a few
months before his father died, he had taken back his pupils to their
home in Germany, from whence he was dismissed, as he wrote, with rich
gifts; and then Mrs. Leigh's heart beat high, at the thought that the
wanderer would return: but, alas! within a month after his father's
death, came a long letter from Frank, describing the Alps, and the
valleys of the Waldenses (with whose Barbes he had had much talk about
the late horrible persecutions), and setting forth how at Padua he had
made the acquaintance of that illustrious scholar and light of the age,
Stephanus Parmenius (commonly called from his native place, Budaeus),
who had visited Geneva with him, and heard the disputations of their
most learned doctors, which both he and Budaeus disliked for their hard
judgments both of God and man, as much as they admired them for their
subtlety, being themselves, as became Italian students, Platonists of
the school of Ficinus and Picus Mirandolensis. So wrote Master Frank,
in a long sententious letter, full of Latin quotations: but the letter
never reached the eyes of him for whose delight it had been penned: and
the widow had to weep over it alone, and to weep more bitterly than ever
at the conclusion, in which, with many excuses, Frank said that he had,
at the special entreaty of the said Budaeus, set out with him down the
Danube stream to Buda, that he might, before finishing his travels,
make experience of that learning for which the Hungarians were famous
throughout Europe. And after that, though he wrote again and again to
the father whom he fancied living, no letter in return reached him from
home for nearly two years; till, fearing some mishap, he hurried back to
England, to find his mother a widow, and hi