‘M. de Bèze,’ La Faye continues, ‘was a man of sturdy build, conspicuous beauty, and health so vigorous that he often said that he did not know the meaning of a headache. He displayed high talents, accurate judgment, a tenacious memory, and remarkable eloquence, while in courtesy of manner he was second to no one. In view of the great gifts thus recited, and his great age (though these are things less to be regarded than his learning and his piety), many used to speak of M. de Bèze as the Phœnix of his time.’ CHAPTER XII AN INTERVAL OF QUIET M. de Bèze was succeeded in the Presidency of the Venerable Company of Pastors by Simon Goulart--the warrior whom we have seen excusing himself for not fighting against the Duke of Savoy on the ground that he had no coat of mail. In his new office, however, Simon needed no armour, for the period from the Escalade of 1603 to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 was quiet and uneventful. The great name of the epoch was that of Jean Diodati, Milton’s friend, the theologian who pulverized the Arminians at the Synod of Dordrecht. Other names are those of Trembley, Tronchin, Turretini, and Calendrini; and there is not a name among them which need detain us. The town was at peace with its neighbours; commerce and industry flourished; and the ecclesiastical discipline gradually lost its grip upon the city, or was, at least, restricted to a narrower field of usefulness. We hear of a good many new sumptuary laws, but we also gather that many of them were only a means of accentuating class distinctions, and that there was a growing difficulty in enforcing them. We find persons burnt alive for witchcraft at the beginning of the period, but not towards the end of it; we hear of doubts diffusing themselves as to the efficacy of torture in extracting the truth from witnesses; and we find even heresy dealt with less rigorously than of old. A heretic who was sentenced to be ‘strangled in the usual manner’ had the sentence, without difficulty, commuted into one of ten years’ banishment. [Illustration: NYON CASTLE, LOOKING ACROSS THE LAKE TO MONT BLANC]