Lausanne. Notice was served on the Genevese to conform to the ritual of
Switzerland. Calvin and Farel resisted; their political opponents used
this disobedience to drive them from Geneva, whence they were, in fact,
banished for several years. Later Calvin returned triumphantly at the
demand of his flock. Such persecutions always become in the end the
consecration of a moral power; and, in this case, Calvin's return was
the beginning of his era as prophet. He then organized his religious
Terror, and the executions began. On his reappearance in the city he was
admitted into the ranks of the Genevese burghers; but even then, after
fourteen years' residence, he was not made a member of the Council. At
the time of which we write, when Catherine sent her envoy to him, this
king of ideas had no other title than that of "pastor of the Church of
Geneva." Moreover, Calvin never in his life received a salary of
more than one hundred and fifty francs in money yearly, fifteen
hundred-weight of wheat, and two barrels of wine. His brother, a tailor,
kept a shop close to the place Saint-Pierre, in a street now occupied
by one of the large printing establishments of Geneva. Such personal
disinterestedness, which was lacking in Voltaire, Newton, and Bacon,
but eminent in the lives of Rabelais, Spinosa, Loyola, Kant, and
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, is indeed a magnificent frame to those ardent and
sublime figures.

The career of Robespierre can alone picture to the minds of the present
day that of Calvin, who, founding his power on the same bases, was as
despotic and as cruel as the lawyer of Arras. It is a noticeable fact
that Picardy (Arras and Noyon) furnished both these instruments of
reformation! Persons who wish to study the motives of the executions
ordered by Calvin will find, all relations considered, another 1793 in
Geneva. Calvin cut off the head of Jacques Gruet "for having written
impious letters, libertine verses, and for working to overthrow
ecclesiastical ordinances." Reflect upon that sentence, and ask
yourselves if the worst tyrants in their saturnalias ever gave more
horribly burlesque reasons for their cruelties. Valentin Gentilis,
condemned to death for "involuntary heresy," escaped execution only by
making a submission far more ignominious than was ever imposed by the
Catholic Church. Seven years before the conference which was now to take
place in Calvin's house on the proposals of the queen-mother, Michel
Servet, _a Fr