Page:The letters of John Hus.djvu/299

 wanted to confess to him. I asked the commissioners, or rather my exhorters, to give me him or another confessor. I said, “Palecz is my chief opponent; I want to confess to him, or else you can give me another suitable man. For God’s sake oblige me.” They did so, and I confessed to a doctor—a monk—who listened to me in a gracious and right beautiful spirit. He absolved me, and gave me advice, but did not enjoin on me what the others advised.

Palecz came and shed tears along with me, when I begged him to forgive me for any hard words I had used against him, and, in particular, for having called him in writing a fiction-monger. I also told him that he was the slédnik of the whole business, and he did not deny it; also how in a public hearing he had risen to his feet when I denied the articles of the witnesses, and said, “This fellow hath no fear of God.” This he denied: but he certainly said it. Perhaps you heard him. I reminded him too of what he said in prison before the commissioners: “Since the birth of Christ no heretic hath written more dangerous teaching against the Church, with the exception of Wyclif, than yourself—I mean you, John Hus.” He also said, “All who have been here to talk with him have been infected with that error concerning the sacrament of the altar.” He denied it, saying, ‘I did not say “All,” but “Many.”’ But he certainly used these words. And then I rebuked him, saying, “Oh, sir, what a grievous wrong you do me in calling all my hearers heretics!” Afterwards he pleaded with me in the same way as the others.