The chancellor replied that what he demanded was retraction, not dispute.  This Luther refused to give.  The emperor insisted on a simple recantation, which Luther declared he could not make.  For several days the hearing continued, ending at length in the threatening declaration of the emperor, that “he would no longer listen to Luther, but dismiss him at once from his presence, and treat him as he would a heretic.”

There was danger in this, the greatest danger.  The emperor’s word had been given, it is true; but an emperor had broken his word with John Huss, and his successor might with Martin Luther.  Charles was, indeed, importuned to do so, but replied that his imperial word was sacred, even if given to a heretic, and that Luther should have an extension of the safe-conduct for twenty-one days, during his return home.

Luther started home.  It was a journey by no means free from danger.  He had powerful and unscrupulous enemies.  He might be seized and carried off by an ambush of his foes.  How he was saved from peril of this sort we have described.  It was his friend and protector, Frederick, the Elector of Saxony, who had placed the ambush of knights, his purpose being to put Luther in a place of safety where he could lie concealed until the feeling against him had subsided.  Meanwhile, at Worms, when the period of the safe-conduct had expired, Luther was declared out of the ban of the empire, an outlaw whom no man was permitted to shelter, his works were condemned to be burned wherever found, and he was adjudged to be seized and held in durance subject to the will of the emperor.

What had become of the fugitive no one knew.  The story spread that he had been murdered by his enemies.  For ten months he remained in concealment and when he again appeared it was to combat a horde of fanatical enthusiasts who had carried his doctrines to excess and were stirring up all Germany by their wild opinions.  The outbreak drew Luther back to Wittenberg, where for eight days he preached with great eloquence against the fanatics and finally succeeded in quelling the disturbance.

From that time forward Luther continued the guiding spirit of the Protestant revolt and was looked upon with high consideration by most of the princes of Germany, his doctrines spreading until, during his lifetime, they extended to Moravia, Bohemia, Denmark and Sweden.  Then, in 1546, he died at Eisleben, near the castle in which he had dwelt during the most critical period of his life.

SOLYMAN THE MAGNIFICENT AT GUNTZ.

Solyman the Magnificent, Sultan of Turkey, had collected an army of dimensions as magnificent as his name, and was on his march to overwhelm Austria and perhaps subject all western Europe to his arms.  A few years before he had swept Hungary with his hordes, taken and plundered its cities of Buda and Pesth, and made the whole region his own.  Belgrade, which had been so valiantly defended against his predecessor,