eating richly but without luxury, in silently amassing money without enjoying it otherwise than as Calvin enjoyed power—­by thought.  Calvin imposed on all the citizens of his adopted town the same gloomy pall which he spread over his own life.  He created in the Consistory a Calvinistic inquisition, absolutely similar to the revolutionary tribunal of Robespierre.  The Consistory denounced the persons to be condemned to the Council, and Calvin ruled the Council through the Consistory, just as Robespierre ruled the Convention through the Club of the Jacobins.  In this way an eminent magistrate of Geneva was condemned to two months’ imprisonment, the loss of all his offices, and the right of ever obtaining others “because he led a disorderly life and was intimate with Calvin’s enemies.”  Calvin thus became a legislator.  He created the austere, sober, commonplace, and hideously sad, but irreproachable manners and customs which characterize Geneva to the present day,—­customs preceding those of England called Puritanism, which were due to the Cameronians, disciples of Cameron (a Frenchman deriving his doctrine from Calvin), whom Sir Walter Scott depicts so admirably.  The poverty of a man, a sovereign master, who negotiated, power to power, with kings, demanding armies and subsidies, and plunging both hands into their savings laid aside for the unfortunate, proves that thought, used solely as a means of domination, gives birth to political misers,—­men who enjoy by their brains only, and, like the Jesuits, want power for power’s sake.  Pitt, Luther, Calvin, Robespierre, all those Harpagons of power, died without a penny.  The inventory taken in Calvin’s house after his death, which comprised all his property, even his books, amounted in value, as history records, to two hundred and fifty francs.  That of Luther came to about the same sum; his widow, the famous Catherine de Bora, was forced to petition for a pension of five hundred francs, which as granted to her by an Elector of Germany.  Potemkin, Richelieu, Mazarin, those men of thought and action, all three of whom made or laid the foundation of empires, each left over three hundred millions behind them.  They had hearts; they loved women and the arts; they built, they conquered; whereas with the exception of the wife of Luther, the Helen of that Iliad, all the others had no tenderness, no beating of the heart for any woman with which to reproach themselves.

[*] Momerie.

This brief digression was necessary in order to explain Calvin’s position in Geneva.

During the first days of the month of February in the year 1561, on a soft, warm evening such as we may sometimes find at that season on Lake Leman, two horsemen arrived at the Pre-l’Eveque,—­thus called because it was the former country-place of the Bishop of Geneva, driven from Switzerland about thirty years earlier.  These horsemen, who no doubt knew the laws of Geneva about the closing of the gates (then a necessity and now very ridiculous) rode in the direction of the Porte de Rive; but they stopped their horses suddenly on catching sight of a man, about fifty years of age, leaning on the arm of a servant-woman, and walking slowly toward the town.  This man, who was rather stout, walked with difficulty, putting one foot after the other with pain apparently, for he wore round shoes of black velvet, laced in front.