'Eminence, I don't only study; I pray and meditate; I take pains to hear all that my opponents say. But my heart stands firm.'
'My son, the tribunal of the Pope is the tribunal of Christ. You are judged; submit! If not, I am sorry—regret deeply—but the consequence is certain.'
And then his own voice, in its last wrestle—
'The penalty that approaches me appears to me more terrible the nearer it comes. Like the Preacher—"I have judged him happiest who is not yet born, nor doth he see the ills that are done under the sun." Eminence, give me yet a little time.'
'A fortnight—gladly. But that is the utmost limit. My son, make the "sacrificium intellectus!"—and make it willingly.'
Ah!—and then the yielding, and the treachery, and the last blind stroke for truth!—
What was it which had undone him—which was now strangling the mental and moral life of half Christendom!
Was it the certainty of the Roman Church; that conception of life which stakes the all of life upon the carnal and outward; upon a date, an authorship, a miracle, an event?
Perhaps his own certainty, at bottom, had not been so very different.
But here, beneath his eyes, in this dying woman, was another certainty; erect amid all confusion; a certainty of the spirit.