sentenced to the flames; but an appeal which they made
from the sentence of the ecclesiastical judge, on the plea that it
contravened the laws of France, secured delay until their case could be
laid before parliament. Months elapsed. Tidings of the danger that
overhung the young students of Lausanne reached Beza and Calvin, and
called forth their warm sympathy.[584]

[Sidenote: Unavailing intercessions.]

The best efforts of Beza and Viret were put forth in their behalf. A
long succession of attempts to secure their release on the part of the
canton of Berne individually, and of the four Protestant cantons of
Switzerland collectively, was the result. One letter to Henry received a
highly encouraging reply. An embassy from Zurich, sent when the king's
word had not been kept, was haughtily informed that Henry expected the
cantons to trouble him no further with the matter, and to avoid
interfering with the domestic affairs of his country, as he himself
abstained from intermeddling with theirs.[585] Subsequent letters and
embassies to the monarch, intercessions with Cardinal de Tournon,
Archbishop of Lyons, who would appear to have given assurances which he
never intended to fulfil, and all the other steps dictated by Christian
affection, were similarly fruitless. In fact, nothing protracted the
term of the imprisonment of the "Five Scholars" but the need in which
Henry felt himself to be of retaining the alliance and support of Berne.
Yet when, as a final appeal, that powerful canton begged the life of its
"stipendiaries" as a "purely royal and liberal gift, which it would
esteem as great and precious as if his Majesty had presented it an
inestimable sum of silver or gold," other political motives prevented
him from yielding to its entreaties. The fear lest his compliance might
furnish the emperor and Pope, against whom he was contending, with a
handle for impugning his devotion to the church, was more powerful than
his desire to conciliate the Bernese. The Parliament of Paris decreed
that the death of the "Five" by fire should take place on the sixteenth
of May, 1553, and the king refused to interpose his pardon.[586]

Their mission to France had not, however, been in vain. It is no
hyperbole of the historian of the reformed churches, when he likens
their cells to five _pulpits_, from which the Word of God resounded
through the entire city and much farther.[587] The results of their
heroic fortitude, and of the wide dis