When he came in sight of the fatal pile, the wretched Servetus prostrated himself on the ground, and for a while was absorbed in prayer. Rising and advancing a few steps, he found himself in the hands of the executioner, by whom he was made to sit on a block, his feet just reaching the ground. His body was then bound to the stake behind him by several turns of an iron chain, whilst his neck was secured in like manner by the coils of a hempen rope. His two books--the one in manuscript sent to Calvin in confidence six or eight years before for his strictures, and a copy of the one lately printed at Vienne--were then fastened to his waist, and his head was encircled in mockery with a chaplet of straw and green twigs bestrewed with brimstone. The deadly torch was then applied to the faggots and flashed in his face; and the brimstone catching, and the flames rising, wrung from the victim such a cry of anguish as struck terror into the surrounding crowd. After this he was bravely silent; but the wood being purposely green, although the people aided the executioner in heaping the faggots upon him, a long half-hour elapsed before he ceased to show signs of life and of suffering. Immediately before giving up the ghost, with a last expiring effort he cried aloud: ‘Jesu, Thou Son of the eternal God, have compassion upon me!’ All was then hushed save the hissing and crackling of the green wood; and by-and-by there remained no more of what had been Michael Servetus but a charred and blackened trunk and a handful of ashes. So died, in advance of his age, one of the gifted sons of God, the victim of religious fanaticism and personal hate. CHAPTER XIX. AFTER THE BATTLE--VÆ VICTORIBUS! Even before the trial of Servetus had come to an end we have seen it attracting the attention of some of the freer minds of Geneva--such as were not over-awed by the dominant spirit of Calvin or not absorbed in the political strife of the hour. A criminal suit on the ground of a new interpretation of Scripture, as it had been made in fine so clearly to appear, struck reasonable men not only as illogical but as indefensible in a city whose autonomy and entire religious system were founded on a right of the kind assumed by itself. Calvin’s dictum, that Servetus’s purpose was the overthrow of all religion, was not seen to be borne out by the facts of the case when calmly considered, and, to the popular apprehension, was wholly belied by the pious bearing of the man in the last hours of his life. Even Farel, misled as he was by his fanaticism, could not help saying to the people, that ‘after all the man may have meant well.’