Engaged with more immediate and interesting business in the political and administrative sphere of their duties, the Council had, in fact, left that in which their prisoner Michael Servetus was so particularly concerned unnoticed for something like fourteen days. This long delay gave him reasonable cause for complaint, and furnished him with grounds not only for the outburst given above, but for a further petition and remonstrance to the following effect: _To the Syndics and Council of Geneva._ My most honoured Lords!--I humbly entreat of you to put an end to these great delays, or to exonerate me of the criminal charge. You must see that Calvin is at his wit’s end and knows not what more to say, but for his pleasure would have me rot here in prison. The lice eat me up alive; my breeches are in rags, and I have no change--no doublet, and but a single shirt in tatters. I made another request to you, which was for God’s sake; but to prevent your granting it, Calvin alleged Justinian against me. It is surely unfortunate for him that he brings against me that which he does not himself believe. He neither believes nor does he agree with what Justinian says of the Church, of Bishops, of the Clergy, nor of many things besides connected with religion. He knows well enough that [in Justinian’s day] the Church was already corrupted. This is disgraceful in him--all the more disgraceful as he keeps me here for the last five weeks in close confinement, and has not yet adduced a single passage [of Scripture] against me. I have also demanded to have counsel assigned me. This would have been granted me in my native country; and here I am a stranger and ignorant of the laws and customs of the land. Yet you have given counsel to my accuser, whilst refusing it to me, and have further set him at large before having taken any true cognisance of my cause. I now demand that my cause may be referred to the Council of Two Hundred. If I am permitted to appeal to it, I hereby appeal; declaring, as I do, that I will take on me all the expenses, damages, and interests, and abide by the award of the Lex Talionis as well in respect of my first accuser [De la Fontaine] as of Calvin his master, who has now taken the prosecution into his own hands. From your prison of Geneva, this 15th of Septr. 1553. MICHAEL SERVETUS, in his own cause.