he would be able to hear and understand what Huss had to say. This was his last lingering hope and this was granted; but in the sovereign the prisoner found a poor protector.
He also begged John of Chlum to intercede with the king that he might be released from prison and have opportunity freely to take counsel with his friends. He hoped on that he might be allowed to preach before the council. With this in view, he had prepared three sermons before leaving Prague; but day after day and week after week passed, and no citation came to appear before it. He had been told he could not get a hearing except by the payment of two thousand ducats.[1] It was a common charge, as has been intimated, that Huss was provided with an abundance of money. In one of the examinations held in the Dominican convent, an archbishop remarked that he had seventy thousand florins, and Michael de Causis insolently put the question to him, how much the barons in Bohemia held in keeping for him? Huss’s expenses were, according to his own statement, high. At least a part of the money with which he met his expenses were loans from poor as well as rich, money it was one of his dying concerns to have refunded.[2]
In March, Huss was again low, racked with the stone— a new experience and with fever and vomiting. The lies circulated against him were many. He speaks of a bag of lies let loose to hurt him and his cause. He was disturbed at the relentless hostility of Palecz and Michael, and the constant watch had over him by spies employed by Michael. Palecz, whom Huss now called the ringleader among his enemies—omnium ductor—went to the extent of proposing that all Huss’s Bohemian adherents be cited before the commission and forced to abjure his alleged errors.[3] Conversations passed between the old friends and colleagues behind the prison walls.
