and many
names--Jupiter, Sol, Apollo, Moses, Christ, Luna, Ceres, Proserpine,
Tellus, Mary. But be careful how you say that. One must disclose
these things in secret, like Eleusinian mysteries. In matters of
religion, you must use the cover of fables and riddles. You, with
Jupiter's grace (that is, the grace of the best and greatest god), can
despise the lesser gods in silence. When I say Jupiter, I mean Christ
and the true God. The coat and the beard and the bones of Christ I
worship not. I worship the living God, who wears no coat nor beard,
and left no bones upon the earth."

Hutten wished to know the world, not from books only, but to see all
cities and lands; to measure himself with other men; to rise above
those less worthy. The danger of such a course seemed to him only the
greater attraction. Content to him was laziness; love of home but a
dog's delight in a warm fire. "I live," he said, "in no place rather
than another; my home is everywhere."

So he tramped through Germany to the northward, and had but a sorry
time. In his own mind he was a scholar, a poet, a knight of the
noblest blood of Germany; to others he was a little sickly and forlorn
vagrant. Never strong of body, he was stricken by a miserable disease
which filled his life with a succession of attacks of fever. He was
ship-wrecked on the Baltic Sea, sick and forlorn in Pomerania, and at
last he was received in charity in the house of Henning Loetz, professor
of law at Greifeswald.

This action has given Loetz's name immortality, for it is associated
with the first of those fiery poems of Hutten which, in their way, are
unique in literature. For Hutten was restless and proud, and was not
to be content with bread and butter and a new suit of clothes. This
independence was displeasing to the professor, who finally, in utter
disgust, turned Hutten out of doors in midwinter. When the boy had
tramped a while in storm and slush, two servants of Loetz overtook him
on the road and robbed him of his money and clothing. In a wretched
plight he reached a little inn in Rostock, in Mecklenberg. Here the
professors in the university received him kindly, and made provision
for his needs. Then he let loose the fury of his youthful anger on
Loetz. As ever, his poetic genius rose with his wrath, and the more
angry he became the greater was he as a poet.

Two volumes he published, ringing the changes of his contempt and
hatred of Loetz, at the s