The lieutenant-criminal, Jean Morin, had kept his eye for some time upon the young doctor. He had discovered his activity in increasing the heretical sect, and also his secret conferences with Cop. His agents were on his track whenever Calvin went by night to teach from house to house.[507]... Cop was the shadow, said the monks; if the shadow escapes us, let us strike the substance. The parliament ordered the lieutenant-criminal to seize the reformer and shut him up in the Conciergerie. [Sidenote: FLIGHT OF CALVIN.] Calvin, trusting to his obscurity and, under God, to the protection of the Queen of Navarre, was sitting quietly in his room in the college of Fortret.[508] He was not however free from emotion; he was thinking of what had happened to Cop, but did not believe that the persecution would reach him. His friends, however, did not share in this rash security. Those who had helped Cop to escape, seeing the rector out of his enemies' reach, said to themselves that the same danger threatened Calvin.[509] They entered his chamber at a time when they were least expected. 'Fly!' they said to him, 'or you are lost.' He still hesitated. Meanwhile the lieutenant-criminal arrived before the college with his sergeants. Several students immediately hurried to their comrade, told him what was going on, and entreated him to flee. But scarcely have they spoken, when heavy steps are heard: it is no longer time.... The officers are there! It was the noise made by them at Calvin's door (says an historian) which made him comprehend the danger that threatened him. Perhaps the college gate is meant, rather than the door of the reformer's own room.[510] In either case, the moment was critical; but if they could manage to gain only a few minutes, the young evangelist might escape. His noble, frank, and sympathetic soul conciliated the hearts of all who knew him. He always possessed devoted friends, and they did not fail him now. The window of his room opened into the street of the Bernardins. They lost not a moment: some of those who came to warn him engaged the attention of Morin and his officers for a few minutes; others remaining with Calvin twisted the bed-clothes into a rope, and fastened them to the window. Calvin, leaving his manuscripts scattered about, caught hold of the sheets and lowered himself down to the ground.[511] He was not the first of Christ's servants who had taken that road to escape death. When the Jews of Damascus conspired against Paul, 'the disciples took him by night and let him down by the wall in a basket.'—'Thus early,' says Calvin, 'Paul went through his apprenticeship of carrying the cross in after years.'[512]