In ordering the summary arrest of Servetus at the instance of Calvin, as we have seen, the Syndic only conformed with usage. But by the law of Geneva grounds for an arrest on a criminal charge must be delivered to an officer styled _Le Lieutenant Criminel_, or the Lieutenant of Criminal Process--a personage evidently holding a responsible position in the city--within twenty-four hours thereafter, failing which the party attached was set at liberty. To prepare the articles of impeachment required, Calvin must have spent the greater part of the night, turning over the leaves of the ‘Christianismi Restitutio,’ for the matter of his charges. These bear very obvious marks of the haste in which they were put together, several of them being repetitions of others that had gone before, and scarcely anything like order being observed in the arrangement of the particulars adduced. Within the legal time, however, the prosecutor was ready with his articles, no fewer than thirty-eight in number, upon which, as a preliminary to further proceedings, it was the duty of the ‘_Lieutenant Criminel_’ to interrogate the prisoner, and from his replies to determine whether or not there were grounds to found what we should call a True Bill against him. Nor was this all. Criminal charges must be made at the instance of some one who should avow himself aggrieved, and not only bind himself over to prosecute the suit he sought to institute to a conclusion, but be content to go to prison with the party he accused, and, in conformity with the requirements of the Lex Talionis, or law of retaliation, engage, in case his charges were not made good, to undergo the penalty that would befall the incriminated party if they were substantiated. It would of course have been not only inconvenient, but unbecoming for Calvin, the real prosecutor in the case, to go into durance vile, his presence in the outer world being so much required. He had therefore to procure a substitute; and we might have expected to find William Trie again brought forward, and made to figure in setting on foot the trial for life or death at Geneva, as he had already lent himself to figure in that of Vienne. But Trie was not produced; it was a certain Nicolas de la Fontaine, a French refugee in the service of Calvin, in what capacity report speaks variously, some designating him cook, whilst others, to enhance his dignity, call him the Reformer’s Secretary. Calvin himself speaks of him familiarly as _Nicolaus meus_, my man Nicolas. That Fontaine was really the Reformer’s cook seems now to have been satisfactorily ascertained; but he may have been a man of parts and education for all that; refugees for conscience sake could not always choose their calling in their new abodes.[72]