Escaped from the Dauphinal prison of Vienne, Servetus must, in all likelihood, have found hiding at first with friends in Lyons. But there, as indeed anywhere else in France, his life was in imminent danger; so that for his own sake, as well as that of his friends, terribly compromised by his presence, he had to seek safety at a distance--even in another country. Nor was it present safety only that was in question: the means of living in time to come had further to be thought of. But master of a profession that is welcome everywhere, he may have had little anxiety on that score; and he who had lived so long unmolested as Villeneuve or Villanovanus, after compromising himself as Serveto, alias Revés, would have been at no loss to find another name to shield him from recognition. His first thoughts carried him in the direction of Spain, but he found so many difficulties from the French gendarmerie, that he turned back; believing then that the best course he could follow would be to betake himself to Naples, where he knew there was a large settled population of his own countrymen, among whom he would find a sufficient field for the exercise of his calling. Calvin--erroneously beyond question--speaks of Servetus having wandered for four months in Italy after his escape from the prison of Vienne. Had he reached Italian ground at this time, he would not have returned upon Geneva, and then--presuming that he escaped Calvin’s further pursuit--he might have lived, usefully engaged, to a good old age, and died quietly in his bed. Servetus arrived in Switzerland from the side of France, and must have been in hiding in that country, or wandering about in disguise from place to place between April 7, the date of his evasion from Vienne, and the middle of July when he reached Geneva. The hue and cry from Vienne was probably not of a kind to be heard afar; they who left the prison door open may have seen to that--Servetus indeed says himself that they did. It was not such, at all events, as to prevent his baffling pursuit and escaping recognition: for he entered Geneva in safety; and feeling the soil of a state beneath his feet where other than Roman Catholic views of religion prevailed, he could hardly have thought that he would suffer molestation did he but keep quiet during the day or two he meant to remain in order to rest and recruit.