"I thank you, Sir," said Paul smiling, "you may be certain that I shall not set your Heidelberg on fire. It catches fire without my aid once in every four weeks."
"Room for Chancellor Probus and the Church Counsellor," cried out Neuser eagerly, as Erast came in accompanied by a stoutly built portly man, who leaning on his sword sat down at the clerical table. The rows became closer and closer, and the young daughter of the court fool, a fresh country lass from the Palatinate, gayly attended to their wants. She appeared however not to notice Master Laurenzano. He sat there without being waited on till the host himself brought him a measure of wine.
"Who is the rough looking man with the huge forehead?" asked the artist. "I mean the individual who so quickly swallows down one beaker after another, and whose every remark calls out a shout of applause from those in his immediate neighbourhood."
"That is Xylander, our celebrated philologist."
"Hem," murmured Felix, "our great humanists look a little different. And the haggard looking man, who behaves in so condescending a manner, as if he feared to tread unawares upon us poor worms with his leonine paws?"
"Be quiet," whispered Paul, "that is the renowned Pithopöus, the great Aristotelean of Deventer."
"He may be stolen from me for aught I care," calmly replied Felix.
"The gentlemen may prepare themselves for severe trials," now began Chancellor Probus raising his voice to call attention. "The introduction of the Genevese Church discipline is almost a foregone conclusion. Presbyteries are to be formed which together with the ministry will carry out the Church excommunication. To sweep before strange doors will now be a profitable occupation. 'The office of the elders,' say Calvin's ordinances, 'consists in watching the life of others.' The quarters of the town will be divided among the elders, who will have to inspect the different houses and verify whether the fathers and the mothers have thoroughly studied the new Catechism, whether the family lives in peace, whether the husband gets drunk, or the wife rails at her neighbors, whether every one goes to Church and Communion, whether dice or cards are in the house, and whether the daughters dance round dances. The Parsons themselves will see to the reform of those denounced. In a word the observance of public order passes from the hands of the officials to those of the clerics."