Villeneuve might possibly have continued lecturing on astrology, composing horoscopes, and casting nativities, as others did in his day, had he but had the prudence to control his tongue, and not hold up his brethren of the Faculty of Physic to contempt by proclaiming their ignorance of a science in which he himself excelled and held necessary to treat disease in the most effectual manner; but he had been indiscreet, and they had won the day. He could no longer go on making forecasts for a credulous public from the aspect of the heavens at the moment of their birth, and he must show himself forward to call in the unsold copies of his pamphlet which had been found so offensive, perhaps because so well directed and so true. It would have interested us in the present day to have known precisely wherein the sting of this apology lay; but like others among the host of ephemeral publications, hurriedly produced to serve a purpose of the hour, it has perished. There were few collectors of ballads, broadsides, and tracts, three hundred and fifty years ago; and all the searches for a copy of the philippic against the Parisian Faculty have proved in vain.[49] From the estimate we are led to form of the self-sufficing and defiant character of Michael Servetus, as displayed in his after life, we are disposed to wonder that he did not continue to dispute the field of Paris with his opponents. He had published his clever and scholarly treatise on Syrups, and through it achieved a title to consideration as a learned practitioner of medicine in the regular way. Such a man as he would soon have lived down the stigma his fellows had fastened upon him as a fortune-teller from the stars, and he must by and by have taken his place in the front rank of his profession. But the physician comes slowly into practice when public confidence is courted through the gate of science. Horoscope-making was probably the main source of Villeneuve’s income; and this forbidden, and the golden stream it fed, arrested, the cold shoulder shown him by his professional brethren, and the averted looks of the public at the man condemned by the Parliament of Paris,--all was against him; his malignant star had culminated, and he seems to have thought it best to yield to fate, and give way.