But there is a deep-lying truth in the French adage: ‘Qui s’excuse s’accuse--_he who excuses accuses himself_.’ The first impulse of the tolerant Servetus, on coming to his senses, was to ask pardon of the man who had brought him to his death; the first impulse of the implacable Calvin was to apologise for his deed, and to shift to a sense of public duty, a course to which his secret soul informed him he had been mainly prompted by private hate. Nor is that which Calvin connects with his apology, when he speaks of having imperilled his life for Servetus’s sake, to be received as true in fact. That he would have braved any danger that might have accompanied the public discussion of their opinions proposed by Servetus in 1534, we can well believe; but he was not required to face it, and all their subsequent correspondence, private and confidential as it was, could have been attended with peril neither to him nor Servetus--or if to either it must have been to Servetus had he been discovered in correspondence with the arch-heretic of Geneva. We can hardly imagine Calvin to have been so totally devoid of humanity as to have felt no compunctious visitings when he stood face to face with the man whom his persistent enmity alone had brought to such a pass; but he would also have been other than he meets us in history, and otherwise circumstanced than he was as αὐτοκράτωρ--despot of Geneva--had he not felt something of self-gratulation and even of triumph, when pardon was asked of him by his humbled foe. CHAPTER XVIII. THE SENTENCE AND EXECUTION. An hour before noon of October 27, 1553, the ‘Lieutenant Criminel,’ Tissot, accompanied by other officials and a guard, entered the gaol, and ordered the prisoner to come with them, and learn the pleasure of My Lords the Councillors and Justices of Geneva. The tribunal, in conformity with custom, now assembled before the porch of the Hotel de Ville, received the prisoner, all standing. The proper officer then proceeded to recapitulate the heads of the process against him, Michael Servetus, of Villanova, in the Kingdom of Aragon, in Spain, in which he is charged--