Sigismund was now thoroughly inflamed against Hus. He had belittled the protection which Sigismund had offered him, and had declared that his friends could protect him against the Emperor; he had quoted a Scriptural instance of the deposition of kings; and, above all, he had disputed Sigismund’s authority over the Latin language. Such a man could not be suffered to live; and the Emperor now declared that he delivered him over to the Council to be burnt, if they so pleased; adding further, that no recantation was to be trusted. He also implied that the death of Jerom must follow that of Hus. Hus now saw that his fate was sealed; and one observes in his letters to his friends the tone of a man who is preparing for death. He was particularly anxious, lest the more ignorant of his followers should suffer for doctrines which they had not understood, and which they had merely adopted from a sense of personal devotion to their teacher. So he wrote to one of these followers, that, if he should be attacked for his adherence to Hus, he should answer his accusers by saying, “I hope that the Master was a good Christian, but I have not understood or read through the things which he taught in the schools.” The thought of the corruptions of the clergy still weighed upon his mind; and he advised his nephews rather to learn some manual work than to become priests; lest, if they assumed the spiritual office, they should not maintain it as it deserved. In the meantime, the Council, with singular maladroitness, had singled out for special condemnation the granting of the Cup to the laity; and thus, at one stroke, they changed the doctrine of a few obscure men into the war-cry of an indignant nation. This decree called the attention to Hus to this matter, which, till then, he had not deeply considered; and he wrote to his successor at the Bethlehem Chapel that he ought not to oppose the granting of the Cup to the laity, since there was nothing but custom against it; and that, if he opposed Jakaubek, there would be a division amongst the faithful. But, while Hus was thus interesting himself in the affairs of his countrymen, the Council were not suffering him to rest in peace. One of the few priests who had shown themselves friendly to Hus at the Council wrote to him urging sophistical arguments in favour of a form of recantation; and Pálec̆ paid him several visits, to worry him into confessions of heresy. Yet, bitterly as he felt the persecutions of his former follower, that same self-distrust and earnest desire for justice which he had shown in the question of the three votes, and again on his retirement from Prague, appeared, even more remarkably, in this last interview. He entreated his enemy to pardon him for having charged him with deliberate falsehood on the occasion of Pálec̆’s first attacks in the Council. The savage apostate was moved even to tears for the moment, though his pity was of short duration.