usly. "I would place with this
humanitarian all the implements with which he worked, his symbolical
books, bishops' mitres, pitch torches, the pears of torture, and a bit
of Sylvan's bloody shirt which was wickedly sent to me on the day after
the poor man's death. They would trumpet in the next world that Kalchas
and Teiresias, Augurs and Haruspices were soft-hearted fellows in
comparison with those who came after them. When I consider the amount
of blood that has been shed since the days of Constantine to the
present time, I wish that a Church had never existed!" "No," replied
Erastus, "it was not my meaning that we should overthrow the Church
because the priests do not satisfy us. That would be like tearing down
a house, because the owner was not popular. We must only place it in
other hands, rule it in a different manner, and for this reform, which
is so necessary, I know of no better fundamental doctrine than that,
which Magister Paul intends to preach for the future, that the Spirit
exists only outwardly in one way, and that is in the Life."

"I hope sincerely," said Felix turning to his brother, "that thou are
not serious in wishing to spend thy days in misery in this land of
fogs, and in cold churches without music, to waste thy life full of
hope in fruitless preachings unaided by art? No, come with me. Thou art
an Italian and can'st not live without the aesthetic, and if thou
remainest, wilt soon enough have to sing out the _super flumina
Babylonis_."

"No Felix," said Paul in a determined tone. "As the choice lies open to
me: rather no music, no pictures, not even laurel hedges and gardens of
the Hesperides, than any return to the old pool of sulphur."

"And dost thou really wish to die a Calvinistic preacher?"

Paul was silent for a while, then modestly answered: "The moment I
regained my consciousness I said daily to myself: Away with the cowl. A
profession which requires us to appear better than other men, easily
renders us much worse. Moreover I felt, that after the miseries which I
have survived, many a temptation is left behind--and finally what
otherwise should I become, dost thou think?"

"Teacher, Magister, Doctor," enumerated the artist quickly.

"I have experienced too much that is serious to be anything else than a
preacher. Shall I mend up the mutilated verses of old poets? or tinker
together the fragments of some forgotten sophist? or pile up some other
learned dung-heap? Whosoever has exper