Peter, who had seen so much of the infamous career of Julius and
Alexander, as to lose all his reverence for the sacred character of the
popes, and who regarded Leo X. merely as a successful rival who had
thwarted his own plans, espoused, with cautious development, but with
true interest, the cause of the reformer. And now came the great war of
the Reformation, agitating Germany in every quarter, and rousing the
lethargic intellect of the nations as nothing else could rouse it.
Maximilian, with characteristic fickleness, or rather, with
characteristic pliancy before every breeze of self-interest, was now on
the one side, now on the other, and now, nobody knew where, until his
career was terminated by sudden and fatal sickness.
The emperor was at Innspruck, all overwhelmed with his cares and his
plans of ambition, when he was seized with a slight fever. Hoping to be
benefited by a change of air, he set out to travel by slow stages to one
of his castles among the mountains of Upper Austria. The disease,
however, rapidly increased, and it was soon evident that death was
approaching. The peculiarities of his character were never more
strikingly developed than in these last solemn hours.
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