[Fr. copy.—Library of Geneva. Vol. 107.]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The letters of the Cantons to the King, in favour of the Vaudois of Provence, only served to irritate that monarch. He passionately replied,—"The Vaudois have but received the just punishment of their crimes. Besides, the Swiss have no more right to busy themselves with what passes in my kingdom, than I have to make inquiry into what they do at home."—Histoire de la Confédération Suisse, vol. xi. p. 289. The failure of those proceedings redounded to the discredit of Calvin with the people, as he had been the instigator of them. His adversaries went about reiterating everywhere that he had compromised the most valued interests of the Cantons, by drawing upon them the enmity of the King of France.
[2] Letter without date, written at the same time as the following, (September 1545.) Summoned in the name of the Emperor to leave Strasbourg and return to Brabant, M. de Falais had not obeyed that command. This refusal, in stirring up the imperial displeasure against him, had exposed him, without defence, to the interested denunciations of his enemies. The butt of most calumnious accusations, he saw his character misunderstood, his name outraged, his property put under sequestration, while he pined away himself—a prey to sickness and discouragement.
[3] This letter, without date, seems to have been written at the same epoch, and under the same circumstances as the two preceding letters.
[4] Letter without date, and without conclusion, written during the attack of the plague, under which the minister Geniston succumbed, that is to say, in September 1545.
[5] Gautier Farel, brother to the Reformer. He was very soon afterwards restored to liberty, contrary to all expectation.
[6] The minister, Louis de Geniston, following the noble example of Pierre Blanchet, cut off by the plague in 1543, had, of his own accord, offered himself for the service of the hospital set apart for those afflicted with the plague. He fell under it, a victim of his devotedness, in September 1545. His wife and two of his children were carried off a few days afterwards by the scourge, which almost wholly depopulated several quarters of the city.
[7] There exists (Imp. Lib. Recueil Hist., de France, vol. xix.) a piece entitled Lepida Farelli Vocatio. In that letter Calvin vigorously urges his friend to repair to Geneva, by calling to mind the religious violence with which he was himself detained there, by the voice of Farel, at the time of his first entrance into that city in 1536. "Do you expect that I should thunder as you were wont to do, when you wished forcibly to draw me hither?" The urgencies of Calvin were fruitless, and the Church of Neuchatel retained, for twenty years longer, the services and the indefatigable activity of Farel.