fail to realise the persistent hostility of the man who held him in such despite. Still he was in Geneva, though a prisoner, and Calvin was not all in all within that Republican city. There was a powerful party opposed to the tyranny and self-assertion of the ecclesiastic, the distinguished heads of which gave him their countenance and support--there seemed hardly room for doubt: he would not be found guilty of having blasphemed, but would be acquitted and set at liberty. Cherishing such hopes and so supported, are we to wonder that the Sentence of Death took the unhappy Servetus entirely by surprise? Only imparted to him in the early morning of the day on which he was doomed to die, he was at first as if struck dumb by the intelligence. He did but groan aloud and sigh as if his heart would burst; and when he recovered speech at length, it was only to rave like one demented, to strike his breast, and cry in his native Spanish, Misericordia, Misericordia! By degrees, however, he recovered his self-possession and became more calm. Master of himself, and reverting in thought to his pursuer, his first coherent words were to request an interview with Calvin, which he, we need not doubt, was nowise slow to grant, for he must have thought it both a flattering and a hopeful proposal. Now had the sinner come to his senses; now would he make a clean breast of it, abjure the convictions of his life, and with a lie on his lips be made meet for glory! But nothing of all this was in the mind of Servetus. He had no misgivings about his theological conclusions; in these he was securely anchored; but he felt like a true man in the face of impending fate, and would own that he had not comported himself with all the respect that was rightfully due to his theological opponent. Hence his request for the interview.