The question fully answered at last.—Farewell, Ferrara!—Welcome inhospitable Caucasus.—Omne solum forti patria est.

Yes! the question was beginning to get answered; beginning, not more as yet. The process of life–discipline, which was to "save" Olympia, to rescue the fine moral gifts and capabilities from suffocation in an element of unrealities, dream–life and Undine–Museship, and to develope the latent capacities of nobleness in her nature, and set her well forward in the Godward path, which shall be, Faith hopes, pursued hereafter,—this was beginning to make its operation appreciable. The baptism of tears had done much. Olympia herself thought that the question had been already answered satisfactorily and in full. She had "got religion," as certain modern sectaries phrase it. And though the special peculiarities of her creed, as professed by her hierophants, are as little calculated to elevate the heart, or enlarge the understanding, as any theory of divine world–governance can well be imagined to be, the religion she had got was a persecuted religion, and derived from that fact an immense saving power, not naturally its own.

But creeds are shown unmistakeably enough to have their home and fatherland in the brain, by the constant exhibition of their powerlessness over the heart; which persists in willing good or evil with most illogical independence of the brain's theories. And human beings accordingly wear their creeds with a difference. Thus these lamentable election and predestination theories, mad and ungodly as they may be, as intellectual beliefs, yet, by the virtue of the persecution with which they were visited,—a virtue addressing itself directly to the heart—served to commence the work of Olympia's rescue from heathendom. But other influences were needed for the maturing of the noble picture of womanhood which her completed career offers us. And these were now ready at her need.

Italy is still the home of art. The citizens of the transalpine nations still flock to her schools of painting, sculpture, and music. But in all else she must submit to be the scholar of her former pupils. It was not so in the sixteenth century. In those days Germans, Englishmen, and Frenchmen thronged the celebrated universities of Italy for instruction in law, science, medicine, and "the humanities." Italy was still the acknowledged leader of European civilisation, though on the very eve of ceasing to be so. Already the orthodox prowess of Duke Hercules was busy in bringing about the change. Human thought cannot be made to advance straight along a path walled in on either side, however long the vista within its narrow bounds may seem to be. Men whose occupation is thinking, will not carry it on at all, while large fields of thought are prohibited to them on penalties, such as those incurred by Fannio of Faenza. So the students from the northern side of the Alps began to find that Ferrara, celebrated as a seat of learning though it had hitherto been, was no longer a home for them.

The learned Germans, John and Chilian Sinapi, were of this number, as was also a young medical student, their countryman and pupil, who had recently received from the University of Ferrara his degree of Doctor of Medicine, named Andreas GrÜnthler. He was a native of Schweinfurth, one of the Bavarian free cities on the banks of the Main; and was, we are assured, of "honourable" birth, distinguished talents, and the possessor of a modest patrimony. He had visited most of the cities of Italy, and had acquired a reputation for Greek and Latin scholarship, before he settled at Ferrara, and dedicated himself to the study of medicine under the teaching of the brothers[83] Sinapi.

Having rehearsed these particulars, it is almost superfluous to add, that GrÜnthler also was an adherent of the new theology. And for him, too, Ferrara was no longer a safe residence. But the Protestant German student had lost his heart to the brilliant Italian Muse;—lost it in the time of her heathendom, and classical Grecian virginship! And though Ferrara was deserted by his friends and countrymen, though it was about to reek with the blood of martyrs, though it was falling more and more from day to day under the blighting ban of the Inquisition, how could poor GrÜnthler shake the dust off his feet against it, and go forth, leaving behind him her who had become dearer to him than life, country, or friends;—leaving her, too, now no longer in the pride and prosperity of her Muse–ship, but in poverty, sorrow, and disgrace, and in danger from the same causes, that made his own retreat expedient? His friend and master Sinapi had loved, and wooed, and won an Italian wife, who had accompanied him across the mountains to his northern home. Why should not he do likewise?

But in the glowing Grecian–virgin days of court prosperity, the gulf that seemed to separate the grave German student from the brilliant creature who had witched his heart was too great, and the contrast between her summer–day existence and the pale life which he could offer to her to share, too strongly marked for him to hope that such an offer would be listened to. It appears, indeed, that the offer had been made and rejected; in terms, too, that would effectually have prevented its repetition by a less devoted and self–forgetting lover. That such was the fact may be gathered from a curious passage in the first letter from Olympia to her husband, which, for some incomprehensible motive, her recent French biographer, who gives a translation of the letter in question,[84] has omitted, without giving any typographical or other intimation, that any part of the sense of the original is absent. After pouring forth her love in the usual delightful fashion of honeymoon letters, she adds, "Were my feelings different I would not conceal them from you, as formerly I plainly told you that I had conceived an aversion to you;"—"ut ante aperte me tui odium cepisse significabam."[85] It was necessary, it should seem, that that Undine nature should be first exorcised by the touch of sorrow, before the mightier wizard, love, could be allowed to enter, and complete the task of purifying, humanising, and elevating it.

But the dark days came; sorrow did its appointed ministry; and then love spoke, and was listened to. In that time of tribulation and trial, when all the world had suddenly changed its welcoming smile to a frown, when none of those she had once thought her friends dared to manifest any interest for the disgraced favourite, then Andreas GrÜnthler dared to woo, and succeeded in inspiring as devoted a love as ever woman's heart felt. Olympia was deeply touched by the noble disinterestedness of her lover's suit. "Neither the resentment of the Duke," she writes, long afterwards, to her earliest friend, Celio Curione, "nor all the miserable circumstances which surrounded me, could induce him to abandon his desire to make me his wife. So great and true a love has never been surpassed."

In Olympia, the unselfish affection of a noble heart evoked, as the sequel of her story shows, a sentiment of equally ennobling devotion. And thus, whatever issue from the predestination maze the puzzled brain may have fancied it had found for itself, the purified heart furnished the completion of the answer to the great salvation question.

The marriage was celebrated in 1550, probably in the last months of that year. A "marriage prayer," in eight Greek verses by Olympia, has been preserved among her works. Her latest biographer[86] says of these lines, that they are a "chant of Pindar repeated by an echo of the Christian revival at Ferrara"—a performance, one would think, nearly equivalent to that of the well–known Irish echo that answered "How do you do?" by "Pretty well, I thank you." The lines in question touch, in very irreproachable Greek, on the analogy between marriage and the mystic union of Christ with the souls of the faithful, and are remarkable only as indicating how complete was the change in the tone of the poet's mind, since she classicalised on death in the manner we have seen in a former chapter.

Deep–felt and complete as we may suppose the happiness Olympia and her husband felt at their union, the marriage must have partaken more of a solemn than of a festive character. There were many difficulties and uncertainties yet before them. To remain in Ferrara, heretics as they were, whose heresy was every day becoming dearer to them, and the open profession of it a craving desire; when Fannio was daily expecting to be brought out of his dungeon to a martyr's death; when the Inquisition was craving for fresh victims; and when the marriage itself was deemed an offence by the Duke, was out of the question. Yet it was hard to leave a mother and sisters; and that rough northern land across the mountains, where freedom of conscience might indeed be hoped for, nevertheless was not itself by any means in a condition to offer her a secure and quiet home.

So far was this from being the case, that GrÜnthler deemed it necessary to submit to a separation from his wife almost immediately after his marriage, that he might, before taking her to Germany, go thither alone to fix on, and prepare, a home for her. His hope was to obtain a professorial chair in some of the medical schools of Bavaria or the Palatinate, and to be able to return to Olympia in the spring of 1551. In the meantime, he had the great consolation of leaving her under the protection of Lavinia della Rovere; whose considerable influence, though it seems to have been exercised in vain to obtain Olympia's restoration to the good graces of the ducal family, yet probably sufficed to prevent any measures of active persecution against her.

Here is the letter above mentioned in its entirety. Perhaps some reader may like to see, that a young wife's honeymoon letter was in 1550 pretty much the same thing, word for word, as a similar effusion in 1850 might be. Of no letter on any other topic, three hundred years old, could the same be said.

"Your departure," writes the lovely wife, "was a great grief to me, and the long absence following it the greatest misfortune that could have befallen me. For when I have you by my side, I am not tormented by the anxieties that now beset me. I am always imagining that you have had a fall, or broken your limbs, or been frozen by the extreme cold. And perhaps I have not imagined anything worse than the reality! You know the poet's saying—

"Res est soliciti plena timoris amor."

"Love is a thing compact of jealous fears."

Now, if you would alleviate this haunting anxiety, which I cannot shake off, you will, if possible, contrive to let me know what you are doing, and how you are. For, I swear to you, that my whole heart is yours, as you know full well. Did I feel differently, I would not hide it from you; even as I formerly owned to you that I had conceived an aversion to you. Would that I were with you, my husband, if only the better to tell you the immensity of my love. You would not believe how I pine in your absence. There is nothing so difficult or so disagreeable that I would not do to please you, my husband. But can you wonder that this delay is hateful to me; for true love abominates and will not endure delay. Any other trial to which I could be put would be better for me than this. I beg and beseech you, therefore, to leave no stone unturned to bring about our meeting this summer as you promised. I know well that your affection is equal to mine; so I will not weary you by urging this point further. Nor have I said thus much in any wise to blame you, but only to remind you of your promise, though I know that you are fully occupied with all these cares."

Thus much may be found in "the complete letter writer," under the heading, "A young wife's first letter to an absent husband." What follows is of more interest.

"As to my dresses, I do not think that it would be becoming to make application for them to the court. The Duchess sent me word by one of her women, that it was not true that the wife of the most noble Camillo (Orsini) had said any thing to her about sending greetings to her daughter. (Her daughter–in–law, Lavinia della Rovere, wife of her son Paolo Orsini, seems to be intended.) She said, however, that she would permit it to be done, since her daughter (that is the Duchess's daughter, Leonora, apparently) wished it; but that she (Lavinia) had begged one dress for me, which she (the Duchess) would not give me before her (Lavinia's) return. I think that she answered thus: that I might see that she did nothing for my sake, but for that of Lavinia; and that she might gratify Lysippa, who was, I believe, with her at the time. But it is better to be silent respecting a matter which is plain to everybody. In any case, I scarcely think that I shall get the dresses. Adieu."[87]

It is difficult to understand what the connection can have been between the salutations sent or not sent by the wife of Camillo Orsini, and the restoration of Olympia's dresses. Thus much, at all events, seems clear however, that when Olympia fell into disgrace at the court, her sovereigns stooped to, what to our notions would appear, the utterly incredible meanness of retaining the dresses belonging to her that happened to be under their roof! We may suppose that these dresses had been probably enough supplied by the Duchess. It may be also remembered, that such things were of very much greater value, both absolutely and relatively to other property, than they are now. Yet, if originally furnished by the Duchess, they had been given to Olympia as a part of the remuneration for her services; she evidently considers them as her own property. And this forcible detention of a dismissed servant's wearing apparel cannot but be felt to indicate on the part of these princes, in the midst of their ostentatious magnificence, a degree of insensibility to any of the feelings that we compendiously term gentleman–like, that makes the circumstance a very curious trait of the manners of the period.

It would seem clear, also, that the Duchess RenÉe was actively hostile to her former favourite. And if the phrase, in connection with Lysippa, to the effect that it was better to say nothing of so notorious a matter, is to be supposed to allude to some court intrigue in which she was concerned, it would seem that Jerome Bolsec was not altogether the contriver of her disgrace. It is remarkable that her old friend Curio, in a letter written from BÂle to a friend of his, who had asked him about Olympia, in giving a little sketch of her career, suppresses all mention of this court disgrace,[88] merely saying that she had been called to the court to share the studies of the Princess Anne, and that she had after that married Andreas GrÜnthler.

Her husband's absence was a sore trial to Olympia, which demanded all, or somewhat more than all, her fortitude.

Her first letter to her husband was soon followed by a second, imploring him to hasten his return. "The uncertainty of the time fixed for your return, and for our departure from Ferrara, causes me incessant torment." She beseeches him not to conceal from her any bad news respecting their prospects. "Should you be called on to meet any danger, which God forbid, I insist on sharing it with you. But above all, my well–beloved, in these so difficult circumstances, be sure that God is our most powerful protector." She exhorts him to remember that God granted the prayer of Elias, so that no rain fell for three years and six months, and to confide in him for support. "My days," she concludes, "are passed in tears; and I find no alleviation for my sorrows but in invoking the Author of all mercies. May He be also your refuge and your asylum. Write to me very soon, to let me know when I shall see you, and do not set out on your journey without sure guides. Adieu."

She writes five letters, following rapidly one after the other, to John Sinapi, who was now established at WÜrzburg, urging him to accelerate her husband's return. "I again and again implore you," she says in one of these, "not to detain him, who is dearer to me than life, longer than one month at the furthest. Send him back to me quickly, if you would not have me, miserable as I am, pine to death of grief."

She reminds him more than once of a volume of her poems, which she had sent to be presented to the King (Ferdinand, King of the Romans), and to the great Augsburg merchant, Raymond Fugger, in hopes of interesting them in her husband's favour.

The lady Lavinia had also promised to induce her husband and father–in–law to interest themselves in GrÜnthler's favour; and there is a letter from her, received by Olympia at this time, in which she tells her friend, that she had after some difficulty succeeded in accomplishing this. She was herself not happy. "As for me," she writes, "understand that my affairs become more and more hopeless from day to day." She concludes her letter by saying that she should have written it in Italian, were it not that she knew that Olympia liked better to read Latin.

Lavinia, however, was at Ferrara during the greater part of GrÜnthler's absence; and her society was Olympia's greatest comfort. There is a dialogue preserved in the volume of her works between the two friends, which probably embodies the substance of conversations that really passed between them.

"Will you always live then in the midst of your books," Lavinia begins, "and never take any repose, Olympia? Rest awhile, and you will return with renewed vigour to your favourite studies."

"Would to Heaven, my friend," says Olympia, after some few words on her devotion to her study,—"Would to Heaven that I had not been so long plunged in oblivion of the only truths worthy of occupying our thoughts. I fancied myself learned, because I read the books of worldly philosophers, and intoxicated myself with the poison of their writings. But just when I was most puffed up with the praises of men, I made the discovery of my profound ignorance. I had wandered so far from the truth, as to imagine the universe to be the production of chance, without governance and without God."...

"But Italy," rejoins Lavinia, "had before this rung with the fame of your piety and your virtues."

"It is true;" answers her friend; "and perhaps this fame may have reached you—

"'Audieras et fama fuit;'

but if men only knew how to estimate at their just worth the flattery addressed to princes and those around them, they would have judged me less favourably. You at least, my friend, must know how far I then was from having any sentiments of true piety."

Lavinia answers, that even so she cannot help admiring the constancy with which Olympia had devoted to the acquisition of learning those long hours which others employ "in adorning themselves, in arranging their hair, and in running after vain pleasures. What especially surprises me is, that you could remain faithful to those studies in the years of your youth, in spite of the raillery of the men and girls, who were always dinning into your ears that life had something else to do, and that husbands would look more after what you possessed than what you knew."

"It is the Lord who willed it so!" returns Olympia; and at this point the dialogue, which it must be admitted has been composed by our Muse in a rather egotistic tone, passes off into a kind of rhapsody, in which the writer sets forth the vanity of earthly things, and the inestimable price of heavenly wisdom.

Meanwhile GrÜnthler had been but very partially successful in the objects of his journey. Germany was in no condition to offer, in any part of it, a desirable home to a peaceful student and his wife. True, that in many of its cities the profession of the reformed faith was a recommendation instead of a sure title to the honours of martyrdom. True, that the new theology had there acquired a respectability of standing, that enabled it to enjoy a share occasionally of the ecclesiastical luxury of persecuting its opponents. But the country was distracted by war or rumours of war on all sides;—war of a different kind, and productive of very different national results from the miserable mercenary contests, which ruined Italy, and only prepared the way for the slavery and degradation of the nation. For the gist of the German fighting, however confused, barbarous, and devastating, was to be found in the determination of men to resist authority and oppression, to have souls of their own, and to say they were their own.

Though the division of the country into two camps by their religious differences enabled princes to play off one part of the people against another in the interests of their own rivalries and ambitions, yet the contests were mostly made to wear the appearance of struggles for the securing of spiritual or civil freedom. And all the misery brought about by them was not therefore unfruitful of good. Though the points in dispute between the rival creeds were often nugatory, though the better sense was not invariably on the side of the reformers, and though good men lamented that Church reform had quitted its proper sphere and duties, when it allied itself with worldly policy and descended from the pulpit into the camp and the battle field, yet even so, and even then, the Reformation was preparing the great career which it has run, and that still before it, from which no man can ever more turn it back.

Charles the Fifth was just then busy in imposing his "Interim" on the German cities. The great council at Trent, which was to "heal the wounds of Christendom," made but small progress in that business; manifested, indeed, a fertility of resource in the discovery of means how not to do any thing of the sort, perfectly marvellous. And Charles, who was perfectly earnest in wishing that these wounds should be healed, or at all events closed up in some sort, for reasons of his own, very much of the nature of those which make a coachman wish that his team may be coupled up, so as to draw well together, became impatient. It struck his royal mind, that the thing must be easy enough if one only went about it in a simple straightforward manner. So he ordered three divines,—Julius Pflug and Helding, on the Catholic side, and one Agricola, a "practical" man, inclined, when he got his cue, to make things pleasant, on the Protestant side,—to draw up a scheme of a good working religion, such as all men might accept without objection,—or despite objection, if it came to that; and to be quick about it. On the 15th of May, 1548, his Majesty was gracious enough to lay the scheme so drawn before the diet; whereupon the Elector of Mentz declared it to be as good a religion as any man need wish for; and being an Archbishop, it was clear that he must know. And this was the celebrated Interim; so named because it professed only to be a provisional faith, for men to live and die—and pay their taxes—by, till such time as what they really were definitively to believe could be got settled for them in a more regular and formal manner.

The indignation and disgust felt at Rome by the regular practitioners at such quack–Pope practice as this, may be easily imagined. The regular–bred Pope examined his rivals' prescription, and found, as we hear without surprise, "seven or eight heresies in it,"[89] all clear and evident like so many false quantities in a school–boy's verse task. Evidently a most unworkmanlike production!

As to the Protestant cities of Germany, they found the Interim religion to be flat Popery. And the royal quack–Pope had to adopt the orthodox practice in administering it. Augsburg, Ulm, Strasburg, Bremen, Lubeck, Hamburg, Magdeburg, Constance, and many other towns would have none of it. And Spanish soldiers had to be employed, with more or less success in different places, in recommending it to their favourable consideration. At Augsburg, Charles placed bodies of these troops at the different gates, and in other commanding positions of the town, then called the members of the municipal government to the town–hall, dismissed them all from their functions, abolished "motu proprio" the entire form of municipal government, and nominated a few creatures of his own to govern the city, each man of whom had sworn to receive and observe the Interim. Ulm he converted much in the same manner, sending off in chains the Protestant preachers. The stout Magdeburgers shut their gates, manned their walls, and stood a siege against the imperial troops and the Interim. For a lay Pope's essay at persecution this was zealous and energetic enough, though falling far short of the true ecclesiastical practice of Inquisition, stake, and faggot.

It might be supposed that Charles would have been too sagacious a man to have imagined that any successful issue could have come of this Interim scheme of his. It seems hardly a thing to have been hoped, that Germany had gone through all the sufferings and sorrows, spiritual and temporal, incidental to a national change of religion, and kicked off the authority of a real Pope, venerable with the prestige of fifteen centuries, to submit quietly to a new quack Pope, whose whole theological apparatus consisted of men–at–arms and gunpowder. If men were to submit to an imposed creed, it was better to take one without seven or eight heresies in it. No very profound knowledge of the human heart, one would think, were needed to enable a sagacious ruler of men to anticipate failure for such a plan; and Charles has the reputation of having been such. But it strikes one, in considering this and a hundred other similar mistakes by the Louis XIVths. and other great masters of kingcraft, as doubtful how far it is practicable for such personages to attain to any knowledge of the plebeian human heart. Of the hearts of princes, ministers of state, popes, cardinals, diplomatists, ambassadors, and such,—though hearts are not generally supposed to be worn on embroidered sleeves,—a royal craftsman practised in the business may know a thing or two; may, perhaps, if acute, obtain some uncertain notion of the hearts of gentlemen–ushers, ladies of honour, grand chamberlains, and other such samples of mankind: but it would seem as if such knowledge were rather calculated to lead a royal philosopher astray in dealing with humanity outside the palace gates.

The mistake into which the sagacious Charles was thus led in the matter of the Interim, was causing throughout Germany the uncomfortable state of confusion that has been described when poor Andreas GrÜnthler, flying from persecution in Italy, came to seek for a home and the means of supporting a wife in his native land.

The search, as we have seen, became prolonged, to Olympia's great distress, far beyond what the young couple had calculated on. GrÜnthler's profession, indeed, was one which the misrule of monarchs has no tendency to render superfluous. On the contrary, he had soon occasion to find that it provided him with work in more than abundance. But then, as still, in Germany, the professional chairs in the Universities afforded the most reliable prospect of bread, with some small modicum of butter, to a studious and married man. GrÜnthler's education and talents well fitted him to teach, and that was his ambition. But town councillors turned violently out of their offices, or in daily dread of being so, and burghers in distress, consternation, and hot debate, between temporal and spiritual ruin, had scant attention to give to such matter. Besides, the lecture–rooms were empty, the students dispersed to their own homes, as the most necessary place for a man in critical and perilous times, or joining in resistance against the oppression that weighed on the country.

Andreas GrÜnthler could hear of no such position as he had hoped to find anywhere. Still he had friends who were influential, and much interested in his and his wife's fortunes. John Sinapi was now settled at WÜrzburg and his brother Chilian at Spire; and both were eager to assist their Ferrara friends in their projects. Hubert Thomas, of LiÈge, secretary to the Count Palatine, was also their firm friend. But a recommendation to George Hermann, of Augsburg, councillor to the King of the Romans, which had been obtained for GrÜnthler by Lavinia della Rovere from her brother–in–law Camillo Orsini, turned out the most immediately valuable. In the impossibility of finding any permanent appointment of the kind desired, this truly friendly man begged the almost despairing professor to bring his wife in the first instance to his house at Augsburg, there to wait till they should be able to see their path in some degree before them.

The proposal opened a harbour of refuge when all the trouble–tossed world seemed to refuse them a resting–place. So poor Andreas hurried back across the Alps to his pining mate, overjoyed to be able to bring her some better tidings than his previous disappointments had enabled him to write to her.

It was decided that they should start from Ferrara for the promised land of free consciences and true religion in the early summer of 1551. How constantly had Olympia been sighing during the months of her solitary life at Ferrara for the coming of this hour! Yet now that it was come, this departure was found to be a very sad business, not to be accomplished without many a wrench of affections rooted in the core of the heart. To leave a mother and three sisters, never in all human probability to be seen again on this side of the grave, was a hard task; and Olympia knew well that such was their parting. In a letter written not long afterwards to Celio Curione at BÂle, she expresses her conviction that she shall never again return to Italy, "where Antichrist is raging with such power."[90] She would rather indeed, she says, seek a refuge in the furthest and most inclement north than re–cross the Alps. Yet that first quitting Italy—bright, sunny, native Italy—and Ferrara, where she had known so much both of happiness and misery—"Ferrara my ungrateful country," as she calls it in another letter[91]—was a bitter moment. That crossing of the mountains had, in those days of little travelling and roads dangerous in all ways, something more alarming to the ideas of an Italian girl than any possible migration on earth's surface could now suggest to the most inexperienced traveller. She writes to worthy George Hermann,[92] when there was a question of some distant appointment for GrÜnthler, that having followed her husband across the Alps, she could have no difficulty in crossing Caucasus—"inhospitalem Caucasum," in true classic phrase—or accompany him to the uttermost ends of the earth, if it were needed. "Omni solum forti patria est!" she adds. But the greatest trial to her fortitude was the first step beyond the marshy plains around persecuting, ungrateful Ferrara.

Painful partings are always most painful to those who are left behind. The necessity of action, and the excitement of going forth to meet new scenes and new fortunes, brace the nerves and give diversion to the grief of those who are to depart; and Olympia was not leaving him who was of all the world dearest to her. But what must the parting have been to the poor mother! Her old friend and former guest, Celio Curione, writing to her several years afterwards, recurs to the sorrows of that time. "The pangs of that departure," he says, "must have been even as the pangs of death when you felt that probably in this life you would never see her again. And truly you might well feel that the separation of death was not very different from that caused by so great a distance."

In fact, the poor mother never did again see her Olympia. And she was soon after left in entire solitude at Ferrara, in consequence of what she was bound to consider the good fortune of each of her three remaining daughters finding honourable positions. Lavinia della Rovere took one of them with her to Rome. Another was attached to the Lady Helena Rangona de Bentivoglio; and the third to that lady's daughter, who was married at Milan. This last, as we learn from a letter from Olympia to Curione, became the wife of a young man of that city, "an only son, very well off in the world, who asked no dower with her." With them, it would seem, the mother found at last a happier home than she had known since she became a widow.

Worthy Andreas GrÜnthler took his young brother–in–law Emilio, then eight years old, with him and his wife into Germany.

At length the last words were said, and the little party turned their faces towards the mountains, and began their journey by the pass of the Brenner. There were more points than one in their route which might have been dangerous to them. At Trent the Council was sitting; and all travellers through a city so occupied were likely enough to be subjected to questionings that might lead known fugitives from religious persecution into trouble. At Innspruck the imperial army was quartered, which was not calculated to make the passage through it agreeable or safe to such wayfarers as our friends.

"The beauty of the season, and the magnificence of the scenery that discovered itself at each step to the eyes of the travellers," says Olympia's French[93] biographer, "without doubt distracted them from the sad thoughts that assailed them on their way to exile."

But it is to be feared that this is an anachronism. The snow–capped mountains, the pine–clad valleys, the precipices, the tumbling waters, and the craggy peaks, were all there then as picturesque–hunting tourists find them now. But men, Italians especially, did not admire such things in the fifteenth century. They only saw "inhospitalem Caucasum" in such scenes. And to our little party it was Caucasus infested with ravening bishops and their officials, with men–at–arms and camp–followers. Under which circumstances it is to be feared that they took small comfort from any appreciation of the picturesque.

But the mountains and all their dangers were happily passed, and the hospitable roof of warm–hearted George Hermann in the good city of Augsburg safely reached by the three travellers about the middle of the year 1551.