The Kaiser understood this, and on their
return he welcomed them with the words, "We have kept you at a
good school." Invited as our adversaries have been under a safe
conduct, why have they not hastened thither, publicly to refute
those against whom they go on quacking like frogs from their
holes? "They broke their promise to Huss and Jerome," is their
reply. Who broke it? "The Fathers of the Council of Constance."
It is false; they never gave any promise. But anyhow, not even
Huss would have been punished had not the perfidious and
pestilent fellow been brought back from that flight which the
Emperor Sigusmund had forbidden him under pain of death; had he
not violated the conditions which he had agreed to in writing
with the Kaiser and thereby nullified all the value of that
safe-conduct. Huss's hasty wickedness played him false. For,
having instigated deeds of savage violence in his native Bohemia,
and being bidden thereupon to present himself at Constance, he
despised the prerogative of the Council, and sought his
safe-conduct of the Kaiser. Caesar signed it; the Christian
world, greater than Caesar, cancelled the signature. The
heresiarch refused to return to a sound mind, and so perished.
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