The experience Servetus had had so lately must have satisfied him that he could hope for nothing from the forbearance of Calvin; but he did not mean to put this to the test: his business was to make no noise, and to be gone as quickly as possible. Though he had made the latter part of his journey on horseback, the usual mode of locomotion in those days, he even deemed it prudent, as less likely to attract attention, to enter Geneva on foot. He therefore discharged his steed at Louyset, a village a few miles distant, where he passed the night, and reached the city in the early morning of some day after the middle of July, 1553. Putting up at a small hostelry on the banks of the lake, having the sign of the Rose, he appears to have lain there privily and unchallenged for nearly a month. What could have induced Servetus to linger in a place where we see, from the precautions he took both in arriving and subsequently, that he could not have thought himself safe, long remained a mystery; but is cleared up in a great measure by the information we obtain through the particulars of the trial to which he was immediately subjected, and of which it is only of late years that a full and entirely satisfactory account has been obtained. We were disposed, at one time, to ascribe the delay in setting out for Italy to the fascination which the strong have over the weak, and to imagine that our wanderer was still anxious for the personal interview with Calvin he had formerly sought, but been forced to forego, in Paris, and for which, as we learn by the letter of Calvin to his friend Farel, he had made fresh proposals at a later date.[67] He was now aware, however, that it was by Calvin he had been denounced to the authorities of Lyons and Vienne, arrested in consequence, put upon his trial, and only saved his life by escaping from prison. He could not possibly, therefore, have flattered himself that the man who was so disposed towards him would receive him in any friendly mood; though it probably never came into his mind to imagine that the Reformer would be disposed to take the knife in hand himself. As we now read the tale, we perceive that Servetus’s presence in Geneva could not have been unknown to all in the city, even from the day of his arrival; and our persuasion is, that for some time at least he was kept there against his will. On his trial we find him stating, incidentally, that the windows of the room he occupied at the Rose _had been nailed up!_ What interpretation can possibly be put on this? The nailing up could not have been done to keep anyone _out_ of a place of public entertainment. It was therefore to keep someone _in_. Servetus must in fact have been anxious from the first to be gone; but he was detained by certain parties in Geneva, not among the number of Calvin’s friends, who thought to make political capital out of his presence among them.