While these things were going on, the huguenots and evangelicals, seized by the bishop's order, were still in prison bound hand and foot. Pierre Vandel, Claude Pasta, the Sire de Compey, Domaine D'Arlod, the energetic Ami Perrin and others, not forgetting Jaquéma, awaited their fate in the gloomy vaults of the episcopal residence. In every house in Geneva and at the town-hall people were constantly talking of them. 'The prisoners,' they said, 'are kept in close confinement.' Such severity excited universal compassion, and the secretary of council mentions it in the Registers.[786] However if the bishop had been able to deprive them of freedom of motion, there was another he could not take from them, which was a sweet consolation for those who had received the gospel in their hearts. 'Though they were bound and made fast in the stocks,' says Calvin, 'still while praying they praised God.' It is of Paul and Silas, shut up in the prison at Philippi, of whom the reformer is speaking; but what he says of the liberty of prayer, which exists even in spite of chains, may be applied to some of those who were now in the prelate's dungeons.
Just at this time a report circulated through the city that the bishop was secretly preparing boats for the removal of the prisoners to some castle. It was said that certain stout watermen were ready to grasp the oar, that an armed force would accompany the captives, and that as soon the episcopal officers were upon the open lake they would laugh at the syndics and the huguenots. These reports still more excited the anger of the citizens. One of them, a daring man named Pierre Verne, watching the boats moored on the shore, sought the means of preventing this unlawful abduction: he thought he had found one, simple and in his opinion infallible, and waited (as we shall see presently) until the veil of night concealed him from the eyes of the enemy.[787]
If the prince's councillors were contriving how to get the huguenot captives away, certain of the mamelukes were vexed that there were still so many at liberty, and that the bishop was so slow in apprehending them all without exception. It seemed to them that the coup d'état, or rather coup de main, of which they had dreamt was long in coming; and they knew that if a bold stroke is to succeed, the execution must be prompt. Some of them began therefore to make amends for official slowness by separate acts of violence.
=ATTEMPT TO MURDER CURTET.=
It was harvest time, and Jean Ami Curtet or Curteti, a man well disposed towards the Gospel and belonging to a family which Duke Philibert le Beau had ennobled, had gone out in the morning to visit a field which he possessed on the banks of the Arve. He examined the ears and the stalks: everything promised a fine harvest. Knowing that when wheat is once ripe, there should be no delay in reaping it, he ordered the labourer who accompanied him to begin to cut it. But he was destined to fall before his corn, and on that very spot.... A sudden noise was heard, some men in disguise fell upon him, knocked him down, beat him and left him for dead in his own field. The news soon reached the city. 'It is some gentlemen in disguise who have murdered him,' said the people. On hearing the mournful news, the relations and friends of Curtet seized their arquebuses, and about forty of them hastened towards the Arve bridge. They raised the poor man who was seriously wounded, and bearing their sad burden returned slowly into the city, their hearts bursting with anger. As the procession passed in front of a house where some Friburgers lodged, one of the Genevans called them 'Rascals and traitors!' The Friburgers, innocent of the attempt, swore that they would demand satisfaction for such an outrage; but the sad procession, passing slowly through the principal streets of Geneva, under the windows of the chief citizens, called up very different thoughts. Men asked each other whether the partisans of the prince-bishop intended to add murder to illegal arrest; whether it was sufficient to wear a mask and strange garments to deprive citizens of their lives, without any risk to the murderers; and whether every huguenot, as he was engaging in the most innocent occupations, might be suddenly laid dead by a masked enemy in the fields bequeathed to him by his ancestors?[788]
While these dangers were accumulating on the heads of the friends of the Reformation in Geneva itself, perils not less great were gathering round the city. People arriving from the country on the left bank of the Rhone and of the lake reported that armed Friburgers and Savoyards were assembling in great numbers at the castle of Gaillard, and that one of the Wernlis commanded a part of them. It was well known that this person, exasperated by the death of his relative the canon, combined in his heart, along with the love and respect he bore to his memory, a more energetic sentiment—that of revenge. The knights and soldiers who gathered round him caught the infection of his anger. But not at Gaillard only were armed men assembling, according to the reports of the country people: there were some higher up, in the direction of the mountains, at Etrembières, where there was a ferry over the Arve to the mandement of Mornex. Others were assembling higher still around the picturesque hill of Montoux, and especially at the village of Collonges, at the foot of the hill. At the same time, the people who came to Geneva from the right bank of the Rhone and the lake, from the side of the Jura, brought similar tidings, and spoke of armed men in the Gex district, and particularly at the Grand Saconnex, three-quarters of a league from Geneva. The city was beginning to be surrounded by its enemies.[789]
The time seemed near when the projects conceived by the bishop at Arbois were about to be realised. That prelate, who reproached his friend Besançon Hugues for not having 'barked' loud enough to prevent the fall of his authority, proposed not only to bark himself against the 'wolves,' but also to bite them. One of those priests whom Rome had raised to the rank of princes of nations had said: 'I am accustomed to act vigorously.... I shall consider what it must be.' The pontiff was preparing to fulfil his own prophecies.
=GENEVA AND CALVIN.=
The future of Geneva was indeed threatening. On the 10th of July a gloomy veil seemed to be closing over that noble city. A fanatical party was preparing the shroud in which it designed to bury the independence of the citizens and the Reformation of the Church. That city, for which many persons had already anticipated a more glorious destiny, was about to be reduced to a mere provincial town, occupying an undistinguished place in the world, and subject to the enervating influence of Rome, without life and without liberty.
But other things were written in heaven. God was preparing both Geneva and Calvin to deliver battle together, on the result of which was to depend the triumph of the Gospel and the liberty of modern nations. And to prepare for these glorious events, the steps of the great reformer were soon to be directed, undesignedly on his part, towards that small but energetic city, unique of its kind in Europe, and of which the man of God was not then thinking.