authority in Geneva.  In fact for a long time his power was malevolently checked by the Genevese.  The town was the residence in those days of a citizen whose fame, like that of several others, remained unknown to the world at large and for a time to Geneva itself.  This man, Farel, about the year 1537, detained Calvin in Geneva, pointing out to him that the place could be made the safe centre of a reformation more active and thorough than that of Luther.  Farel and Calvin regarded Lutheranism as an incomplete work,—­insufficient in itself and without any real grip upon France.  Geneva, midway between France and Italy, and speaking the French language, was admirably situated for ready communication with Germany, France, and Italy.  Calvin thereupon adopted Geneva as the site of his moral fortunes; he made it thenceforth the citadel of his ideas.

The Council of Geneva, at Farel’s entreaty, authorized Calvin in September, 1538, to give lectures on theology.  Calvin left the duties of the ministry to Farel, his first disciple, and gave himself up patiently to the work of teaching his doctrine.  His authority, which became so absolute in the last years of his life, was obtained with difficulty and very slowly.  The great agitator met with such serious obstacles that he was banished for a time from Geneva on account of the severity of his reform.  A party of honest citizens still clung to their old luxury and their old customs.  But, as usually happens, these good people, fearing ridicule, would not admit the real object of their efforts, and kept up their warfare against the new doctrines on points altogether foreign to the real question.  Calvin insisted that leavened bread should be used for the communion, and that all feasts should be abolished except Sundays.  These innovations were disapproved of at Berne and at 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.