_October 26._--The Council, in its capacity of High Court of Criminal Justice, solemnly convoked for this day, was well attended, though not quite complete as to numbers; Amied Perrin, cured of his indisposition, presiding. The Governing Body of the Republic of Geneva consisted, as we have seen, of two extreme and mutually opposed parties--the Libertines, or patriots, and the Clericals, or abettors of Calvin and theocratic rule. Each of these had representatives in the Council whose voices could be implicitly relied on. But--as in all general assemblies that ever came together, there are still found a certain number of neutrals or waverers, men of no strong convictions one way or another; too weak in some cases to rely on themselves and act independently; too strong in others to be led by any convictions but their own, whose votes could make the balance incline one way or another, so were they not wanting in the Council of Geneva at this time. Now, in the fateful meeting of October 26, it was observed that several of the most constant opponents of Calvin had absented themselves, whilst not one of his regular supporters failed to appear. The resolution to be come to was delicate, on matters unfamiliar, and apt to excite the scruples of the conscientious and timid. It was the life of no brutal offender against person or property, no criminal, in fact, save by construction, that was in debate, but that of a scholar of varied accomplishments, against whom no social delinquency had been charged, or, if charged, which had not been rebutted, and fallen to the ground. Yet was this man accused of heresy and blasphemy against God and religion, not only by the distinguished head of the Church of Geneva and its other ministers, but was now found guilty of these theological crimes, involving, as they were said to do, disruption of the entire social fabric, by every one of the Confederate Churches and Councils consulted. What, forsooth, could be urged in behalf of him who had spoken of the Trinity as a three-headed monster, comparable to the hell-dog of the heathen poets, and declared the Baptism of Infants to be an invention of the devil? And then, and yet more, it was not by the Reformed Churches only that the prisoner had been challenged for heresy, and found guilty; he had been tried and convicted on this ground by their neighbours the Roman Catholics of Vienne, been burned in effigy by them along with his books, and only escaped burning in person by breaking from his prison. The Genevese, moreover, had been frequently reproached as well by papists as by professors of other forms of Christianity akin to their own, with laxity in matters of doctrine, and even called abettors of heresy and shelterers of heretics; and they had, indeed, been invaded of late by a host of individuals fleeing for their lives, through entertaining all manner of new and hitherto unheard-of opinions on religion.