ngs became so severe that it was
manifest his earthly career was rapidly drawing to a close. On the 6th
of February of that year he preached his last sermon, having with great
difficulty found breath enough to carry him through it. He was several
times after this carried to church, but never again was able to take any
part in the service. With his usual disinterestedness he refused to
receive his stipend, now that he was no longer able to discharge the
duties of his office. In the midst of his sufferings, however, his zeal
and energy kept him in continual occupation; when expostulated with for
such unseasonable toil, he replied, "Would you that the Lord should find
me idle when He comes?" After he had retired from public labours he
lingered for some months, enduring the severest agony without a murmur,
and cheerfully attending to all the duties of a private kind which his
diseases left him strength to discharge. On the 25th of April he made
his will, on the 27th he received the Little Council, and on the 28th
the Genevan ministers, in his sick-room; on the 2nd of May he wrote his
last letter--to his old comrade Farel, who hastened from Neuchatel to
see him once again. He spent much time in prayer and died quietly, in
the arms of his faithful friend Theodore Beza, on the evening of the
27th of May, in the fifty-fifth year of his age. The next day he was
buried without pomp "in the common cemetery called Plain-palais" in a
spot not now to be identified.

Calvin was of middle stature; his complexion was somewhat pallid and
dark; his eyes, to the latest clear and lustrous, bespoke the acumen of
his genius. He was sparing in his food and simple in his dress; he took
but little sleep, and was capable of extraordinary efforts of
intellectual toil. He had a most retentive memory and a very keen power
of observation. He spoke without rhetoric, simply, directly, but with
great weight. He had many acquaintances but few close friends. His
private character was in harmony with his public reputation and
position. If somewhat severe and irritable, he was at the same time
scrupulously just, truthful, and steadfast; he never deserted a friend
or took an unfair advantage of an antagonist; and on befitting occasions
he could be cheerful and even facetious among his intimates. "God gave
him," said the Little Council after his death, "a character of great
majesty." "I have been a witness of him for sixteen years," says Beza,
"and I think I