The agitation was not confined to the people: the syndics had summoned the council. ‘This morning,’ they said, ‘before daybreak, two heads and two arms were fastened to a tree opposite the church of Our Lady of Grace. We know not by whose order.’[172] Everybody guessed whose heads they were and by whose order they had been exposed; but the explosion was not so great in the council as in the crowd. They must have understood that this cruel act betokened sinister designs; they heard the thunder-clap that precedes the storm: yet each man drew a different conclusion. Certain canons, monks, and other agents of the Roman Church, accomplices of the tyrant, called for absolute submission. Certain nobles thought that if they were freed from the civic councils, they could display their aristocratic pretensions more at their ease. Certain traders, Savoyards by birth, who loved better ‘large gains in slavery than small gains in liberty,’ amused themselves by thinking that if the duke became master of the city, he would reside there with his court, and they would get a higher price for their goods. But the true Genevans joyfully consented that their country should be small and poor, provided it were the focus of light and liberty. As for the huguenots, the two heads were the signal of resistance. ‘With an adversary that keeps any measure,’ they said, ‘we may relax a little of our rights; but there are no considerations to be observed with an enemy who proceeds by murder.... Let us throw ourselves into the arms of the Swiss.’ The bishop’s crime thus became one of the stages on the road to liberty. No doubt the victims were culpable, but the murderers were still more so. All that was noble in Geneva sighed for independence. The mameluke magistrates strove in vain to excuse an act which injured their cause; they were answered rudely; contrary opinions were bandied to and fro in the council, and ‘there was a great disturbance.’ At last they resolved to send an ambassador to the princes to inquire whether this barbarous act had been perpetrated by their orders, and in that case to make remonstrances. This resolution was very displeasing to the mamelukes, who endeavoured to soften the harsh message by intrusting it to pleasing messengers. ‘To obtain what you desire from princes, you must send them people who are agreeable to them,’ said the first syndic. The assembly accordingly named the vidame Aymon Conseil, an unblushing agent of Savoy; the ex-syndic Nergaz, a bad man and personal enemy of Berthelier; and Déléamont, governor of Peney, against whom the huguenots had more than once drawn the sword. The duke, being at that time in his Savoy provinces, received the deputation coldly at a public audience, but made much of them in private. The ambassadors returned in three days with an unmeaning answer.[173]