The Council appear to have been nowise moved by this very reasonable petition. The request for counsel, here reiterated, was not noticed--it had already been disposed of, and could not be granted; but the petition to have his case referred to the Council of the Two Hundred was discussed and rejected: the tribunal before which he was on his trial was competent in every respect by the laws of the State. Orders, however, were given that the articles of clothing he required should be procured for him at his proper cost; but as it seems to have been the business of no one to see the order carried into effect, or because the Council and custodians of the gaol of Geneva were accustomed to see their prisoners in rags and devoured by vermin, it was unheeded at the time, although attended to at a somewhat later period in this eventful history. Had there been no resolution to take the opinion of the Councils and Churches of the confederate Reformed Cantons, everything necessary to a decision was again before the Court. The term had indeed been exceeded within which by the law of Geneva the proceedings ought to have ended--the law positively forbidding the protraction of a criminal suit beyond the term of a calendar month. The law had, therefore, been violated; but there was no one to urge the point in behalf of the prisoner, any more than there had been to expose Calvin’s disobedience of the Council’s orders to present his Articles of Incrimination without note or comment. Neither the Clerical nor the Libertine party, however, had yet done with the unfortunate Servetus, although it was not before their meeting of September 21 that the Council found itself at leisure to take up the tangled skein of the Servetus-prosecution again, and to order the necessary documents to be prepared for submission to the Councils and Churches they had determined to consult. Before despatching these when ready, they seem to have thought it would be well to show Calvin the short demurrers of Servetus to his elaborate Refutation; expecting, probably, that he would have something to say to them, but not meaning to let Servetus see anything Calvin might think proper to add. There was no occasion however, as it fell out, to act on this rather partial reservation. The Reformer did not think fit to notice even one of the unhappy annotations of his enemy, in which the lie direct is given him something like fifty times; and the epithet _nebulo_--knave--is not the most offensive that is applied to him. He did not add a word to what he had already written. A mere glance at the unhappy jottings sufficed, as it seemed, to make him feel sure of his suit; Servetus, he saw, stood self-condemned in his neglect to adduce Scripture authority for his peculiar views, or to show that they had either been misinterpreted or misunderstood by his pursuer. The abusive epithets so plentifully heaped on Calvin only recoiled upon himself. CHAPTER XV.