[Footnote 421: "La difficulté est," he writes to M. de Falaise, April, 1546, "des fascheries et rompemens de teste qui interviennent, pour _interrompre vingt fois une lettre_, ou encore d'advantaige." He adds (and the details are interesting) that, although his general health is good, "je suis tormenté sans cesse d'une doleur qui _ne me souffre quasi rien faire_. Car oultre les _sermons et lectures_, il y a desjà un mois que _je n'ay guères faict_, tellement que j'ay presque honte _de vivre arnsi inutile_." Lettres françaises, i. 141, 142. Many a scholar of his day, or of ours, would consider a week of _health_ well occupied with the preparation and delivery of two sermons and three theological lectures.] [Footnote 422: "Ginevra ... che è la minera di questa sorte di metallo." Relazione di M. Suriano, 1561. Relations des Amb. Vénitiens, i. 528.] [Footnote 423: This period of his life was referred to by him in his last address to the body of his colleagues: "J'ay vescu içy en combats merveilleux; j'ay esté salué par mocquerie le soir devant ma porte de 50 ou 60 coups d'arquebute. Que pensez-vous que cela pouvoit estonner un pauvre escholier, timide comme je suis, et comme je l'ay toujours esté, je le confesse?... On m'a mis les chiens à ma queue, criant _hère, hère_, et m'ont prins par la robbe et par les jambes." Adieux de Calvin, _apud_ Bonnet, Lettres françaises, ii. 575.] [Footnote 424: "This sacrifice," M. Gaberel forcibly observes, "has scarcely a parallel in history. Men willingly consent to make the greatest efforts, to perform the most painful acts of self-denial, with the aim of saving their country. Formerly the Genevese suffered unto death to preserve their independence. Now the same unselfish spirit is demanded of them in ordinary times that they exhibited in evil days. And, if the people accepts the 'Ordinances,' it is because it has narrowly scanned the slavery to which that moral license was leading it, which Rome authorizes in order to confiscate all other liberties. It accepts the 'Ordinances' because it has just escaped the treacherous machinations, the servitude prepared for it by men whose principle is to go just as their own heart leads them.... Strengthened by this vote, Calvin can henceforth hope to succeed in his project, and make of Geneva the Protestant metropolis, bearing as its motto, 'Holiness to the Lord.'" Histoire de l'église de Genève, i. 346, 347.] [Footnote 425: Recherches de la France (ed. of 1621), p. 769. Giovanni Michiel, in 1561, told the Doge of Venice: "Nè potria vostra Serenità creder l'intelligenza e le pratiche grandi che ha nel regno il principal ministro di Genevra che chiamano il Calvino, Francese e Picardo di nazione, uomo di estraordinaria autorità, per la vita, per la dottrina, e per i scritti appresso tutti quelli di questa sette." Rel. des Amb. Vén., i. 415.] [Footnote 426: Histoire ecclésiastique, i. 13-17; Crespin, Actiones et Monimenta (Geneva, 1560), fol. 65, etc.]