in the mean while
do the Popish litanyings, waxlight processionings and idolatrous
stage-performances with him on the morrow, which was CORPUS-CHRISTI
Day; and the Protestants could not nor would. Imperial hints there had
already been, from Innspruck; benign hopes, of the nature of commands,
That loyal Protestant Princes would in the interim avoid open
discrepancies,--perhaps be so loyal as keep their chaplains, peculiar
divine-services, private in the interim? These were hints;--and now this
of the CORPUS-CHRISTI, a still more pregnant hint! Loyal Protestants
refused it, therefore; flatly declined, though bidden and again bidden.
They attended in a body, old Johann of Saxony, young Philip of Hessen,
and the rest; Margraf George, as spokesman, with eloquent simplicity
stating their reasons,--to somewhat this effect:--

Invinciblest all-gracious Kaiser, loyal are we to your high Majesty,
ready to do your bidding by night and by day. But it is your bidding
under God, not against God. Ask us not, O gracious Kaiser! I cannot, and
we cannot; and we must not, and dare not. And "before I would deny my
God and his Evangel," these are George's own words, "I would
rather kneel down here before your Majesty, and have my head struck
off,"--hitting his hind-head, or neck, with the edge of his hand, by
way of accompaniment; a strange radiance in the eyes of him, voice
risen into musical alt: _"Ehe Ich wolte meinen Gott und sein Evangelium
verlaugnen, ehe wolte Ich hier vor Eurer Majestat niderknien, und mir
den Kopf abhauen lassen."--"Nit Kop ab, lover Forst, nit Kop ab!"_
answered Charles in his Flemish-German; "Not head off, dear Furst, not
head off!" said the Kaiser, a faint smile enlightening those weighty
gray eyes of his, and imperceptibly animating the thick Austrian
under-lip. [Rentsch, p. 637. Marheineke, _Geschichte der Teutschen
Reformation _ (Berlin, 1831), ii. 487.]

Speaker and company attended again on the morrow; Margraf George still
more eloquent. Whose Speech flew over Germany, like fire over dry
flax; and still exists,--both Speeches now oftenest rolled into one by
inaccurate editors. [As by Rentsch, ubi supra.] And the CORPUS-CHRISTI
idolatries were forborne the Margraf and his company this time;--the
Kaiser himself, however, walking, nearly roasted in the sun, in heavy
purple-velvet cloak, with a big wax-candle, very superfluous, guttering
and blubbering in the right hand of him, along the streets of Augsburg.