e of future achievement and
thereby rouses ambition.

The wisdom and kindness of heart of the Emperor Rudolph, whom the
grey-haired ruler's friends called "Wisdom," had certainly chosen the
right course for Heinz. But he who had always regarded every opportunity
of drawing his sword for his master as a rare piece of good fortune,
shrank in dismay from this, the most important and honourable charge that
had ever been bestowed upon him. It drew him away from the new path in
which he did not yet feel at home, because the love he could not abjure
constantly thrust him into the world, into the midst of the life and
tumult from which Heaven itself commanded him to turn aside.

The Minorite had scarcely been right in the assertion that only the first
rounds of the ladder which leads to heavenly bliss were hard to climb.

How quickly he had set his foot on the first step; but each upward stride
was followed by one that dragged him down-nay, it had seemed advisable
wholly to renounce the effort to ascend them, when the monk expected him
to sever the bond which united him to the Emperor, and to tell the
sovereign that he had entered the service of a greater Master, who
commanded him to fight with other weapons than the sword and lance.

Heinz had regarded this demand as a summons to turn traitor. It did not
seem to be the call of the devout, experienced director of souls to the
disciples, but the Guelph to the Ghibelline, for Ghibelline he meant to
remain. Gratitude was a Christian virtue, too, and to refuse his service
to the Emperor, who had been a father to him, to whom he had sworn
fealty, and who had loaded him with benefits, could not be pleasing in
the sight of any God. He could never become a Guelph, he told his
venerable friend. The Emperor Rudolph was his beloved master, from whom
he had received nothing but kindness. He might as well be required to
refuse obedience to his own father.

"What Guelph? What Ghibelline?" cried the Minorite in a tone of grave
rebuke. "The question is submission to the Most High, or to the world and
its claims. And why should not Heaven require, as you term it, that you
should obey the Lord more willingly than your earthly father--you, whom
the mercy of God summoned amidst thunder and lightning in the presence of
thousands? When Francis, our beloved model, the son of Pier Bernardone,
was threatened with his father's curse if he did not turn back from the
path which led to the highest goal