accompanied by a gesture of denial from her thin old hand; but Wolf
glanced at the clock which the precentor had received as a testimonial of
affection from the members of the cathedral choir, which he had led for
years.

It was already half past one, and for the sake of Ursel, who was still
obliged to take care of herself, he urged departure, adding gaily that he
had not the ability to "defend himself against two." Erasmus, too, was
surprised to find it so late, and, after shaking hands with the old woman
and promising to visit her soon again, seized his cap. Wolf accompanied
him.

The May night was sultry, and the air in the low room had been hot and
oppressive.

He would gladly have dropped the useless discussion, but Erasmus's heart
was set upon winning his schoolmate to the doctrine which he believed
with his whole soul. He toiled with the utmost zeal, but during their
nocturnal walk also he failed to convince his opponent. Both were true to
their religion. Erasmus saw in his faith the return to the pure teachings
of Christ and the liberation of the human soul from ancient fetters;
Wolf, who had had them pointed out to him at school by a Protestant
teacher, by no means denied the abuses that had crept into his, but he
clung with warm love to Holy Church, which offered his soul an abundance
of what it needed.

His art certainly also owed to her its best development--from the
inexhaustible spring of faith which is formed from thousands of rivulets
and tributaries in the holy domain of the Catholic Church, and in it
alone, the most sublime of all material flowed to the musician, and not
to him only, but to the artist, the architect, and the sculptor. The
fullest stream--he was well aware of it--came from ancient pagan times,
but from whatever sources the spring was fed, the Church had understood
how to assimilate, preserve, and sanctify it.

Erasmus listened silently while Wolf eagerly made these statements; but
when the latter closed with the declaration that the evangelical faith
would never attain the same power of elevating hearts, he interrupted the
knight with the exclamation, "We shall have to wait for that!"

Luther, he went on, had given the most powerful encouragement to music,
and the German Protestant composers even now were not so very far behind
the Netherland ones. The Catholic Church could no longer claim the great
Albrecht Durer, and, if art ceased to create images of the saints, with
which the