Neither the duke nor the bishop had exhausted their plans. The heads of Blanchet and Navis, suspended seven months before on the walnut-tree, were there still, tossed by every wind, and telling the passers-by that the wrath of the princes was not yet appeased. The bishop asked himself whether these commoners, who claimed liberty in the State, would delay much longer before demanding liberty in the Church.... People spoke of extraordinary things that were happening in Germany. A Wittemberg doctor had appealed from the pope to a general council, and was preparing to maintain certain propositions at Leipsic in which the primacy of the Roman Church was denied as being opposed to the history of eleven centuries and to the text of Scripture. Would these strange notions, worthy of the Germans, spread to countries nearer Rome? Would Wittemberg and Geneva, those two little corners of the earth, be two volcanoes to shake the ground around them? A remedy must be applied at any cost, and those principles of civil and religious liberty be stifled, which, if not seen to in time, might work strange revolutions in the world. The bishop on his return from Turin had merely passed through Geneva; and fleeing from the plague, had taken refuge at Ripaille, near Thonon, whence he made the most serious complaints to the Genevans. ‘You are always conspiring,’ he wrote, ‘in order that you may satisfy the appetites of a _heap_ of individuals who are plotting against their honour and against me.’[250] About the end of June he removed to the château of Troches, near Dovaine. The principal mamelukes hastened to this ancient manorial house.[251] They had no very clear ideas of what was going on in Germany, and of the consequences that might result to Europe; their attachment to the ducal and episcopal cause depended rather upon motives of interest and family tradition; but they instinctively felt that a struggle had begun in Geneva between the old and the new times, and that the partisans of the former must combine all their strength against the latter. They made the halls of the château reecho with their loud voices; they entered into cowardly conspiracies; these supporters of feudalism, however honourable they might be in other matters, shrank not from any crime to check the advent of liberty. There was one citizen in particular whom they hated--one life that must be sacrificed. ‘First,’ said they to the bishop, ‘we require Berthelier’s death, and pray, my lord, let the blow be prompt. Second, the rebellious councillors must be dismissed. Third, your grace must come into the city ... with _good swords_!’ The mamelukes undertook to find employment for these swords, and the bishop said ‘Amen.’