Calvin then would have faced the danger of the public discussion, though persecution was hot at the time against heresy, and he was not unsuspected on this score. The danger to him, however, would have been slight in comparison with that which Servetus must have incurred. Calvin would not have stood forth on this occasion as the defender of any heresy, but of the very fundamentals of the Christian faith as embodied in its Creeds; to some of the most essential propositions in which Servetus, on the contrary, must have shown himself diametrically opposed. Servetus therefore, in this instance at least, saw perforce that discretion was the better part of valour, and wisely stayed away. He was in truth far too deeply compromised to venture on an appearance; for if discovered to be Michael Serveto, nothing could have saved him from the heretic’s death. He had nothing for it therefore but to forfeit his engagement and lay himself open to Calvin’s reproachful ‘_vous avez fuy la luite_’--you fled the encounter--of a later and to him more momentous epoch in their common lives. CHAPTER VIII. LYONS. ENGAGEMENT AS READER FOR THE PRESS WITH THE TRECHSELS. EDITS THE GEOGRAPHY OF PTOLEMY. Theology, however, after which we see Servetus still hankering--_hæret lateri letalis arundo!_--and even the study of the mathematics on which he was now engaged, had to be abandoned for present means of subsistence; and as Lyons seemed even a better field for the scholar than Paris, to Lyons, after a short stay at Avignon and Orleans, he betook himself. There he appears immediately to have found employment as reader and corrector of the press in the house of the distinguished typographers, the Brothers Trechsel; and if the Age have its character from the aggregate of its science and culture, and the Individual his bent from his more immediate surroundings, we cannot but think of Servetus’s connection with these light-spreaders as another among the highly influential events in his life. Books in the early days of printing were much more generally written in Latin than in the vernacular, and ever more and more with references to Greek, lately brought greatly into vogue by Erasmus and the Reformers. The reader for press in the best establishments was therefore, and of necessity, a scholar and man of letters; and the opportunities for improvement now put in the way of one like Servetus, even whilst pursuing the mechanical part of his duties, have only to be hinted at to be appreciated. The reading room of the distinguished typographers of those days was, indeed in some sort, a continuation of school and college to the competent corrector of the press.