Page:The letters of John Hus.djvu/237

 for a long time I have been without it and still shall be, as long as God wills. And no wonder, since Christ’s apostles and many other saints in prisons and desert abodes were likewise without it.

I rejoice that you stand together and that Železný Brada is in good health with you all. So am I too, trusting as I do in Jesus; but I shall be in better health after death, if I keep God’s commands to the end. Would that God would give me time to write against the lies of the Chancellor of Paris, who so presumptuously and unjustly before the world hath dared to charge his neighbour with heresy. But perchance God will cut short his writing either by my death or his, and in His judgment will settle the matter better than any writing of mine could do.

Meanwhile in Constance the struggle between the Council and John XXIII., which had begun in the proposal for his abdication, had rapidly reached a crisis. John realised that his last throw must be made. On March 20 he left Constance ‘in an indecent disguised lay dress’ ‘in the darkness of a foggy night.’ Two days later the Council received news that he had arrived at Schaffhausen. Hus soon learned the news, and adds an interesting comment.

If Hus’s first letter after the flight of John gives little indication of the excitement at Constance, his second letter, written three days later, throws a vivid side-light on the confusion. Hus himself ran some danger of starvation. Hitherto the Pope had paid ten florins a week for Hus’s support and the expenses of his imprisonment. Not only was this supply cut off, but, as