The door opened. Thekla Mayr said, “Enter, wandering students!”
She stood, slender, between fair and brown, in a red gown of her own weaving and fashioning. “Welcome, Conrad Devilson! Welcome, Walther von Langen! Welcome to Hauptberg, Albrecht and Ulrich! Welcome—”
“Thekla, this is Eberhard Gerson who made and engraved the pictures for ‘The Silver Bridge.’ With Ulrich and Albrecht he left Wittenberg yesterday.”
“Welcome, Eberhard Gerson!”
She went before them into a room where a fire burned, and in a great chair, in its light, sat Gabriel Mayr. “Father, here are wandering students! Here are Conrad Devilson and Walther von Langen, and Albrecht and Ulrich and Eberhard Gerson who made the pictures for ‘The Silver Bridge!’ And they have news from Wittenberg.”
Gabriel Mayr roused himself. “Wait, young men.... I am old.... It takes time to get back into the blowing wind and the moving water.” He pressed his hands against his brows, shook himself in the cloak that was wrapped about him. He gathered energy as one blows coals with his breath. The coals glowed, his eyes brightened, he straightened in his chair, back in good measure came the old potency. “Wittenberg! Who comes from Wittenberg! What is Martin Luther doing now?”
“He has taken the Pope’s bull in his hands and burned it outside the town gate!”
“Ha-ah! Did he that?” Gabriel Mayr brought his hands together. “Thekla, Thekla! Do you hear a world gate clanging?”
He sat in his great chair, about him the young men, the wandering students. He wore a black cap, and from underneath his white hair streamed and mingled with the long white hair of his beard. His features were bloodless, his eyes sunken, but very bright. He looked a prophet, such an one as, down in Italy, Michael Angelo was painting. His daughter stood with her arm resting upon the back of his chair.
Mayr spoke on: “I knew that the vehemence of his ongoing would become to that young man an urgent dæmon! Now he cannot stop. He is Samson! He will carry away the gates upon his shoulders and the young and strong will pour in upon a decrepit city.... It is well! It is written! The city has become drunken and witless. Yet will some flowers be trodden underfoot and works of art perish.... And he is Samson, he is not Socrates.... Yet, Thekla, Thekla! We must rejoice! We make a half-step toward freedom!”