All the grounds for a definitive decree being before the Court on their meeting of the 23rd, we must presume that the sense of the members generally as to the guiltiness of the prisoner had been ascertained, and that the opinion of the majority to this effect was only not formulated and pronounced because of the absence of some of the leading Councillors--that of Amied Perrin, the first Syndic, being particularly remarked. An adjournment was therefore moved; but to afford no further excuse for delay in bringing the protracted business of the Servetus Trial to an end, summonses for a special session on the 26th were ordered to be issued. Doubtful of the decision, as it might seem, and anxious for delay in consequence of the tenor of the letters from the Churches, Perrin had absented himself from the meeting of the 23rd, through indisposition, as he said himself, through _feigned_ indisposition, according to Calvin, as we learn from a letter of his to his friend Farel of the 26th, in which he speaks of his great political antagonist by the derisive title of _Cæsar comicus_. Meantime, the members of the Court present determined to proceed to the gaol, and inform the prisoner of their purpose to have him before them with the least possible delay, to hear their final award. Before taking their leave, and as if to intimate to the unhappy Servetus what was to follow, they placed him under the care of two special warders, who were to hold themselves responsible with their lives for his safe custody. The unusual visit of his Judges, and the additional guard set over him must, we should imagine, have sent a chill to the heart of the unfortunate Servetus, and gone far to damp out the hope he had been led to entertain either of acquittal or a sentence short of that which he knew Calvin had made up his mind from the first to extort. Yet does he not appear even now to have thought it possible that his Judges would condemn him to death. Self-conscious rectitude alone, and a better belief than it deserved in the world’s will to do justly and mercifully, had blinded him to the fate that awaited him.