for they had not drawn back one step in the battle, and had thus prepared the day of triumph. Leaving behind them the city, with its tumult, its menaces, insults, and deeds of violence, Farel and Calvin set out for Berne. It was at the end of April. As they passed along the shores of the lake in the midst of the beautiful and peaceful scenes of nature, they felt greatly relieved. Escaped from those narrow walls within which their hearts had been torn with grief and broken with sadness, they once more breathed freely. A pure and keen air was around them instead of that heavy and thick atmosphere, and it gave them new life. ‘When, on occasion of certain troubles, I was driven away,’ said Calvin, ‘I did not find in myself such magnanimity as not to rejoice more than was meet--that then and by that means I was at liberty.’[655] There was in him, however, no murmuring, no bitterness. He had learnt many lessons in the midst of that agitation, especially that of self-renunciation. ‘As soon as one becomes a self-seeker,’ he said at that period, ‘contests begin: the true principle of action for a soldier is to lay aside all pride, and to depend entirely on the will of his chief.’[656] The will of his chief was that he should quit Geneva, and he quitted it; in this very dependence realizing the highest independence. Stripped and wounded, like the man who went down to Jericho, he felt the Lord near him, who bound up his wounds and poured in oil and wine. ‘Let us remember,’ said he further, ‘that declaration of Jesus Christ, that no one can inflict a wound on one of his little ones but he regards it as inflicted on himself.’[657] Then glancing towards the friends to whom they were going, ‘We have turned towards you, brethren,’ said he, ‘towards you who have been set to feed the churches of Christ, under the influence of the Holy Spirit. Ah! if it be under the guidance of the same prince, against the same enemy, in the same war, and in the same camp that we fight, shall we not be greatly stimulated in our endeavor after agreement and harmony?’[658] He did not lose courage even with respect to the Reformation. ‘The Church,’ he said, ‘is not wearied, distressed, or overthrown by these struggles and fightings; on the contrary, she derives strength from them, she begins to flourish, she is consolidated by new developments.’[659] Such, indeed, was the fruit borne by this great trial. ‘Events have shown,’ said Theodore Beza, ‘that the providence of God appointed these dispensations, to the end that his servant, by means of various experience, might be fitted for greater things; and that while seditious men destroy themselves by their own violence, the Church of Geneva might be purified from all stains.’[660] Poor blind Courault did not feel strong enough to follow his two colleagues, and therefore took refuge with Fabri, who was pastor at Thonon, on the lake of Geneva. CHAPTER XII.