But here Dr. Eberbach impetuously broke in upon the conversation: 

“For the sake of a fair woman Ilion suffered unspeakable tortures.  But to us a single song of Homer is worth more than all these Hebrew writings.  And yet a Trojan war of the intellect has been kindled concerning them.  Here freedom of investigation, yonder with Hoogstraten and Tungern, fettering of the mind.  Among us, the ardent yearning to hold aloft the new light which the revival of learning is kindling, yonder superior force is struggling to extinguish it.  Here the rule of the thinking mind, in whose scales reason and counter-argument decide the matter; among the Cologne people it is the Grand Inquisitor’s jailers, chains, dungeons, and the stake.”

“They will not go so far,” replied the abbot soothingly.  “True, both the front and the back stairs are open to the Dominicans in Rome.”

“Yet where should humanism find more zealous friends than in that very place, among the heads of the Church?” asked Dr. Peutinger.  “From the Tiber, I hope——­”

Here he paused, for the new guest who had just entered the room attracted his attention also.  The landlord of The Blue Pike respectfully preceded him and ushered him directly to the Nuremberg party, while he requested the Dominican monks who accompanied him to wait.

The late arrival was Prof.  Arnold von Tungern, dean of the theological faculty at the University of Cologne.  This gentleman had just been mentioned with the greatest aversion at the table he was now approaching, and his arrogant manner did little to lessen it.

Nevertheless, his position compelled the Nuremberg dignitaries to invite him to share their meal, which was now drawing to a close.  The Cologne theologian accepted the courtesy with a patronizing gesture, as if it were a matter of course.  Nay, after he had taken his seat, he ordered the landlord, as if he were the master, to see that this and that thing in the kitchen was not forgotten.

Unwelcome as his presence doubtless was to his table companions, as sympathizers with Reuchlin and other innovators, well as he doubtless remembered their scornful attacks upon his Latin—­he was a man to maintain his place.  So, with boastful self-conceit, allowing no one else an opportunity to speak, he at once began to complain of the fatigues of the journey and to mention, with tiresome detail, the eminent persons whom he had met and who had treated him like a valued friend.  The vein on the little doctor’s high forehead swelled with wrath as he listened to this boastful chatter, which did not cease until the first dish was served.  To brave him, Eberbach turned the conversation to humanism, its redeeming power over minds, and its despicable foes.  His scornful jests buzzed around his enemy like a swarm of gnats; but Arnold von Tungern pretended not to hear them.  Only now and then a tremor of the mouth, as he slowly chewed his food, or a slight raising of the eye-brows, betrayed that one shaft or another had not wholly missed its mark.