Farel was preparing for the disputation; and on the Roman Catholic side there was much ado to find valiant champions. At Lausanne there was no canon, no priest, no monk who came forward to defend the doctrine by which till that day they had lived. It was necessary to beat to arms elsewhere. They did so; and at the end of September the Dominican Monbouson, Michod dean of Vevey, the vicars Drogy and Berrilly, and others besides, arrived, in the town. Two laymen alone represented Lausanne, the captain of the youth,[392] Fernand de Loys, and the French physician Blancherose. The latter was ‘_un homme tenant de la lune_’ (something of a lunatic), said the Catholic Pierrefleur, ‘who blends in his discussions medicine and theology, and excites boundless merriment.’ Viret, Marcourt, and Lecomte appeared for the reformed. From Geneva came Chapuis, a former Dominican, then pastor at Compesières, and Jacques Bernard, formerly superior of the Cordeliers. But the man who chiefly attracted attention was Farel, who was accompanied by a young man pale and modest, unknown by sight to most, and who appeared to be his assistant. It was John Calvin. Farel had urged him to come to Lausanne, but Calvin shrank from the thought of speaking in that great assembly. Still he was deeply interested in its proceedings. ‘The Senate of Berne,’ said he, ‘has declared that everyone is at liberty to state his objections freely, without need to fear being disturbed in consequence of it. That is the fittest means of exposing the ignorance of those who set themselves against the Gospel.’[393] These two men had set out in company with the Syndic Porral, and they arrived with many others at the cathedral, in which the disputation was to be held. An amphitheatre had been constructed. The altars, pictures, statues, and rich ornaments of the Romish worship still displayed their magnificence; and even the canons, who were determined to keep silence, but nevertheless wished to do something, had brought out of their hiding-places the image of the holy Virgin and all those of the saints, trusting more, it would seem, to the eloquence of those dumb figures than to their own.