Berthelier, calm because he was innocent, provided besides with an episcopal safe-conduct, had appeared before the syndics to be tried. The duke and the bishop had given orders to their agents, the vidame Conseil and Peter Navis, the procurator-fiscal, to manage his condemnation. The trial began: ‘You are charged,’ said these two magistrates, ‘with having taken part in the riotous amusements of the young men of Geneva.’--‘I desired,’ answered Berthelier frankly, ‘to keep up the good-will of those who were contending for liberty against the usurpations of tyrants.’ The justification was worse than the charge. ‘Let us seize him by the throat, as if he were a wolf,’ said the two judges. ‘You have conspired,’ they continued, ‘against the life of the prince-bishop,’ and they handed in Pécolat’s depositions as proof. ‘All lies,’ said Berthelier coldly, ‘lies extorted by the rack and retracted afterwards.’ Navis then produced the declarations of the traitor Carmentrant, who, as we have seen at the _momon_ supper, undertook the office of informer. ‘Carmentrant!’ contemptuously exclaimed the accused, ‘one of the bishop’s servants, coming and going to the palace every day, eating, drinking, and making merry ... a pretty witness indeed! The bishop has prevailed upon him, by paying him well, to suffer himself to be sent to prison, so that he may sing out against me whatever they prompt him with ... Carmentrant boasts of it himself!’ When they sent the report to the bishop, he perceived, on reading it, that this examination, instead of demonstrating the guilt of the accused, only revealed the iniquity of the accuser; the alarmed prelate therefore wrote to the vidame and Navis to ‘use every imaginable precaution.’ It was necessary to destroy Berthelier without compromising the bishop.