The bishop, who had first sentenced, then pardoned, and then repented of his pardon, was continually hesitating, and did not know what party to side with. He was not devoted body and soul to the duke, like his predecessor. Placed between the Savoyards and the huguenots, he was at heart, equally afraid of both, and by turns flung himself into the arms of opposite parties. He was like a stag between two packs of hounds, always afraid and panting. 'I write angrily,' he says in his letters: he was, indeed, always angry with one party or the other. Even the canons, his natural friends, and the members of his council aroused his fears, and not without cause; for these reverend persons had no confidence either in the bishop's character or in the brigandage of the gentry of the neighbourhood. Messieurs De Lutry, De Montrotier, De Lucinge, De St. Martin, and other canons said that the temporal authority of the prelate was too weak to maintain order; that the sword of a secular prince was wanted, and at the bottom of their hearts they called for the duke. 'Ah!' said La Baume to Hugues, 'the chapter is a poisoned body;' he called the canons thieves and robbers: Ille fur et latro est, he said of one of them. The episcopal office appeared a heavy burden to him; but it put him in a position to give good dinners to his friends, and that was one of the most important duties of his life. 'I have wine for the winter,' he wrote in a postscript to the letter in which he made these complaints, 'and plenty to entertain you with.'[711] Such were his episcopal consolations.
[699] Psalm i.
[700] M. Michel Chevalier, on the Prosperity of Protestant Nations.
[701] Galiffe, Matériaux pour l'Histoire de Genève, ii. p. xxviii.
[702] Galloix, Salève. The author remembers reading, since the time of his boyhood, these three words on the ruins that have been since restored, Nasci, pati, mori.
[703] Spon, Hist. de Genève. Gautier MS. Guizot, Civilisation en France et en Europe. Froment.
[704] Ordonnance de Louis Hutin. Guizot, Civilisation en France, v. p. 138.
[705] Registres du Conseil du 3 décembre. Lettres de Messieurs de Berne. Galiffe fils, Besançon Hugues, Pièces Justificatives, p. 487.
[706] Registres du Conseil des 15, 16, 23, 24, 28 mars.
[707] Roset, Chron. MS. liv. ii. ch. ii. Registres du Conseil du 7 septembre 1526. Spon, Histoire de Genève, ii. p. 396. Bonivard, Chroniq. ii. pp. 446, 447. Gautier MS.