Secondly, my Lords, I entreat you to consider that I have committed no offence within your territory; neither, indeed, have I been guilty of any elsewhere: I have never been seditious, and am no disturber of the peace. The questions I discuss in my works are of an abstruse kind, and within the scope and ken of men of learning only. During all the time I passed in Germany, I never spoke on such subjects save with Œcolampadius, Bucer, and Capito; neither in France did I ever enter on them with anyone. I have always disavowed the opinions of the Anabaptists, seditious against the magistrate, and preaching community of goods. Wherefore, as I have been guilty of no sort of sedition, but have only brought up for discussion certain ancient doctrines of the Church, I think I ought not to be detained a prisoner and made the subject of a criminal prosecution. In conclusion, my Lords, inasmuch as I am a stranger, ignorant of the customs of this country, not knowing either how to speak or comport myself in the circumstances under which I am placed, I humbly beseech you to assign me an Advocate to speak for me in my defence. Doing thus, you will assuredly do well, and our Lord will prosper your Republic. In the City of Geneva, the 22nd day of August, 1553. MICHAEL SERVETUS, In his own cause. This well-worded, and in its demands most reasonable address, strange to say, received no notice beyond an order to the clerk of the Court to enter it on the minutes; the prisoner being at the same time curtly admonished to go on answering the questions addressed to him. But how hardly the poor man was being used by his self-constituted Judges we shall see by the tenor of the next petition he addressed to them. He had been thrown into one of the foul cells or dungeons appropriated to criminals of the vilest class, accused of crimes against person and property; and there, in addition to mental anguish, he had to suffer all the bodily miseries that filth, foul air, cold and vermin inflict.