ew Protestant faith. This also
grieved him, and urged him to go from street to street, from church to
church, from monastery to monastery, from one of the chapels which no
great mansion in his native land lacked to another, in order to ascertain
what else religious fanaticism had destroyed; but he was obliged to
hasten if he wished to be received by those in his home whom he most
desired to see.

The windows of the second story in the Golden Cross, opposite to the Ark,
were brilliantly lighted. The Emperor Charles lodged there, and probably
his royal sister also. Wolf had given his heart to her with the devotion
with which he had always clung to every one to whom he was indebted for
any kindness. He knew her imperial brother's convictions, too, and when
he saw at one of the windows a man's figure leaning, motionless against
the casement with his hand pressed upon his brow, he realized what deep
indignation had doubtless seized upon him at the sight of the changes
which had taken place here during the five years of his absence.

But Emperor Charles was not the man to allow matters which aroused his
wrath and strong disapproval to pass unpunished. Wolf suspected that the
time was not far distant when yonder monarch at the window, who had won
so many victories, would have a reckoning with the Smalcalds, the allied
Protestants of Germany, and his vivid imagination surrounded him with an
almost mystical power.

He would surely succeed in becoming the master of the Protestant princes;
but was the steel sword the right weapon to destroy this agitation of the
soul which had sprung from the inmost depths of the German nature? He
knew the firm, obstinate followers of the new doctrine, for there had
been a time when his own young mind had leaned toward it.

Since those days, however, events had happened which had bound him by
indestructible fetters to the old faith. He had vowed to his dying mother
to remain faithful to the Holy Church and loyally to keep his oath. It
was not difficult for one of his modest temperament to be content with
the position of spectator of the play of life which he occupied. He was
not born for conflict, and from the seat to which he had retired he
thought he had perceived that the burden of existence was easier to bear,
and the individual not only obtained external comfort, but peace of mind
more speedily, if he left to the Church many things which the Protestant
was obliged to settle for himself. Be