man laid too much importance on Astrology, a
heathen and Jewish science as well as a blasphemous inquisitiveness.
Both Luther and Master Calvin reproached him for this very reason. Our
great Genevese teacher does not hold images in any esteem, and thus the
statues of the planets which you see there, are doubly objectionable to
my Church Council."

Felice impatiently shrugged his shoulders, and for a moment it seemed
as if the wrath of the hot-blooded Neapolitan must explode.

"I do not mean," said the Kurfuerst kindly, "that we must remove all the
statues. The male deities and ancient heroes below there can possibly
disturb no one, and even if the heathen Hercules looks rather
remarkable standing between Samson and King David, he has such a kind
genial expression that I cannot help every morning being amused at him.
He is also a fitting companion to Samson, who holds the jaw-bone of the
ass in his right hand, and has the dead lion at his left side, and was
himself the Hercules of the people of Israel. Above them you see the
five virtues: strength breaking pillars, justice with sword and
balance, faith, hope and charity; charity is the best of them,
therefore is she placed over the portal. Against these even Olevianus
can say nothing. In the third row higher up are the planetary deities:
Saturn, wishing to eat up the child. Mars, Venus, Mercury and Diana,
the goddess of the moon, but above them all, there where dwells my
physician Erastus and his daughter, who has just withdrawn her pretty
fair head from the window, is Jupiter and the Sun-God Serapis with his
radiant crown. Against these the spiritual gentlemen are especially
spiteful."

"I also," said Erastus for the first time joining in the conversation,
"am no friend of astrology, and have, as Your Highness knows, written a
book against it. That which makes me however especially take offence at
the opinion of my colleagues, is the way in which the gentlemen
composing the Church Council, go about Your Highness' Land, spying
about with a telescope seeking for some ground of complaint. The
figures are so high, that they can scarce be plainly seen with the
naked eye, and no straightforward Christian knows that they represent
sun, moon and planets, from which constellations the deceased Count
Palatine traced all the good or evil fortunes of man, and therefore
placed his home under their protection. Were it not known, that Master
Philip advised the deceased Count in hi