The Genevans did not confine themselves to useless lamentations; they did not turn their eyes to the blow they had just received, they looked to the hand that struck it; it was the hand of their bishop. Everybody knew the failings of Navis and Blanchet, but at this moment no one spoke of them; they could only see two young and unhappy martyrs of liberty. The anger of the people rose impetuously, and poured itself out on the prelate more than on the duke. ‘The bishop,’ they said, ‘is a wolf under a shepherd’s cloak. Would you know how he feeds his lambs, go to the bridge of Arve!’ Their leaders thought the same: they said, it was not enough for the prince-bishop to plunge families and a whole city into mourning, but his imagination coldly calculated the means of increasing their sorrow. These suspended heads and arms were a notable instance of that cruel faculty of invention which has always distinguished tyrants. To torture in Piedmont the bodies of their young friends did not satisfy the prelate, but he must torture all hearts in Geneva. What is the spirit that animates him? What are the secret motives of these horrible executions?... Despotism, self-interest, fanaticism, hatred, revenge, cruelty, ambition, folly, madness.... It was indeed all these together. Think not that he will stop in the midst of his success: these are only the first-fruits of his tenderness. To draw up proscription lists, to butcher the friends of liberty, to expose their dead bodies, to kill Geneva,--in one word, to take pattern by Sylla in everything,[170]--such will henceforward be the _cure of souls_ of this son of the pope. The resistance of the citizens to the encroachments of the prelate assumed from that hour a character that must necessarily lead to the abolition of the Roman episcopacy in Geneva. There is a retributive justice from which princes cannot escape, and it is often the innocent successors who are hurled from their thrones by the crimes of their guilty predecessors; of this we have seen numerous examples during the past half-century. The penalty which has not fallen on the individual falls on the family or the institution; but the penalty which strikes the institution is the more terrible and instructive. The mangled limbs hanging on the banks of the Arve left an indelible impression on the minds of the Genevan people. If a mameluke and a huguenot happened to pass the bridge together, the first, pointing to the walnut-tree, would say to the second with a smile: ‘Do you recognise Navis and Blanchet?’--the huguenot would coldly reply: ‘I recognise my bishop.’[171] The institution of a bishop-prince, an imitation of that of a bishop-king, became every day more hateful to the Genevans. Its end was inevitable--its end at Geneva: hereafter the judgments of God will overtake it in other places also.