‘But--let there be no mistake about it--they made merry in the midst of filth and evil smells. On this point we have unimpeachable information in the shape of a rescript issued by the Chapter of the Cathedral after conference with the Vidomne and the Syndics. The Chapter complains that too many citizens dispose of their slops by carelessly throwing them out of window, and establish refuse-heaps outside their front-doors--a noisome practice which still prevails in many of the Swiss villages, though no longer in any of the Swiss towns. It is also complained that nearly every man has a pig-sty, and lets his pigs run loose in the streets for exercise, and that there is an undue prevalence of such unsavoury industries as the melting of tallow and the burning of the horns of cattle. One can imagine the net result of this great combination of nuisances. In a city of magnificent distances it might have passed. Bayswater, at the present day, lives in ignorance of the smells of Bermondsey. But in Geneva, when Geneva was almost as small as Sandwich, one can understand that the consequences were appalling to the nostrils of the polite. The fact that the city was so overrun with lepers and beggars that two lazar-houses and seven _hôpitaux_--or casual wards, as one might say--had to be provided for their reception, adds something, though not perhaps very much, to this unpleasant side of the picture. [Illustration: L’ÉGLISE DE LA MADELEINE, GENEVA] ‘Our ecclesiastical rescript further proves that while the Genevans were a merry and a dirty, they were also an immoral, people. It records that they are unduly addicted to the game of dice, and that the outcome of this pastime is “fraud, deception, theft, rapine, lies, fights, brawls, and insults, to say nothing of damnable blasphemy”; and it ordains that any man who “swears without necessity” shall “take off his hat and kneel down in the place of his offence, and clasp his hands, and kiss the earth”--or pay a fine of three halfpence if he fail to do so. Then it proceeds to propound an elaborate scheme for the State regulation of immorality, forbidding certain indulgences “to clergymen as well as laymen”; and requiring the Social Evil to wear something in the nature of a Scarlet Letter to distinguish her from other women.’ CHAPTER II THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE In the first half of the sixteenth century occurred the two events which shaped the future of Geneva: Reformation theology was accepted; political independence was achieved.