I cannot tell; for the peril was imminent, and it appeared doubtful if anything would be gained by braving it. However that may be, Cop was only Calvin's double; it was his friend's faith that urged him forward more perhaps than his own. To stand firm in the day of tempest, man must cling to the rock without human help; Cop, overtaken by this news of death at the very moment he fancied he was marching to victory, lost his presence of mind, stopped the procession, was suddenly surrounded by several friends, and, the disorder being thus augmented, he escaped and hastily returned home.[502] [Sidenote: THE RECTOR'S FLIGHT.] Where shall he go now? There could be no doubt that the parliament would seize him wherever he could be found; his friends therefore insisted that he should quit France. He was strongly inclined to do so: Basle, the asylum of his master Erasmus, was his native place, and he was sure of finding a shelter there. Cop flung off the academical dress, the cap and gown, which would have betrayed him;[503] caught up hurriedly what was necessary for his journey, and by mistake, some say, carried away the university seal with him.[504] I rather believe he did so designedly; compelled to yield to force, he desired, even when far from Paris, to retain the insignia of that illustrious body. His friends hurried him; at any moment the house might be surrounded; he quitted it stealthily, escaped out of Paris, and fled along the road which leads to Basle, using every precaution to conceal himself from the pursuit of his enemies. When the archers went to his house, they searched it in vain: the rector had disappeared. The parliament, exasperated at this escape, promised a reward of three hundred crowns to any one who should bring back the fugitive rector, _dead or alive_.[505] But Cop in his disguise eluded every eye; he succeeded through innumerable dangers in getting safely out of the kingdom, and arrived in Switzerland. He was saved; but the Reformation was threatened with a still more terrible blow. The Roman party consoled themselves a little for this escape by saying that Cop was only a puppet, and that the man who had pulled the strings was still in their power. 'It is Calvin,' they said, 'whom we must seize. He is a daring adventurer, a rash determined man, resolved to make the world talk of him like that incendiary of the temple of Diana, of whom history speaks. He will keep all Europe in disquietude, and will build up a new world. If he is permitted to live, he will be the Luther ... the firebrand of France.'[506]