The appeal made to the self-esteem of the Council of Geneva, and a possible desire on their part to enter into rivalry with the judicial tribunal of Vienne, may have contributed in some measure to the final condemnation of Servetus. We do not read that they took the becoming course at once of declining to question the prisoner on matters having not even the most remote connection with the cause; they seem actually to have tried to elicit information from him, that would have been of use to M. Maugiron, in making the gift of his Majesty the King of France of much avail; but Servetus positively declined to give any information of the kind desired, as having no bearing on the matters for which he was now on his trial, and being likely to distress many poor persons who were indebted to him. CHAPTER VIII. SERVETUS IS VISITED IN PRISON BY CALVIN AND THE MINISTERS. We have seen symptoms of something like a leaning of the Court towards the prisoner. They had requested Calvin and others of the Clergy to visit and confer with him, and do their best to bring him to what all regarded as a better understanding; and it would appear that immediately after the last sitting, Calvin, accompanied by several Ministers, proceeded to the gaol and had an interview with the prisoner. Calvin of course was the spokesman, and opened upon him with an address in which he strove to show him not only the load of error under which he laboured in his exposition of Scripture generally, but the grave offence he had committed in attacking the particular dogma of the Trinity, as interpreted by the Churches, and in calling all who believed in it Tritheists and even Atheists. From what we already know we may divine how little a visit from John Calvin with such an exordium was likely to lead to any satisfactory conclusion; Servetus appears at first, indeed, to have declined even to hear his visitors: he was too much oppressed by sorrow, sickness, and long confinement, he said, to enter on any defence of his views, and a prison was no fit place for theological discussion. Stern, bigoted, and uncompromising as he was by nature, Calvin would have been false to his calling as a Minister had he not striven, though thus encountered, to bring even a personal enemy to what he believed to be proper thoughts of the Trinity, the nature of the Logos and the Sonship of Christ; and we do not question his will and inclination to do so; but in Servetus Calvin saw the man who had insulted and so had mortally offended him, whilst in Calvin, Servetus beheld the individual who so lately, by underhand means and the violation of his confidential correspondence, had wrecked his fortunes and sought his life; the man, moreover, at whose instance he was now in prison and subjected to what he rightfully regarded as unworthy usage and an unauthorised and unjust trial.