John Huss and the Hussite Wars - James Aitken Wylie

deceive."
The Council was visibly agitated. Some desired
to save the life of a man so learned and eloquent.
The spectacle truly was a grand one. Pale,
enfeebled by long and rigorous confinement, and
loaded with fetters, he yet compelled the homage
of those before whom he stood, by his intellectual
and moral grandeur. He stood in the midst of the
Council, greater than it, throwing its assembled
magnificence into the shade by his individual
glory, and showing himself more illustrious by his
virtues and sufferings than they by their stars and
miters. Its princes and doctors felt humbled and
abashed in presence of their own prisoner.
But in the breast of Jerome there was no feeling
of self-exaltation. If he speaks of himself it is to
accuse himself.
"Of all the sins," he continued, "that I have
committed since my youth, none weighs so heavily
on my mind, and causes me such poignant remorse,
as that which I committed in this fatal place, when
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