Bonivard, who thought himself free now that he had become poor, had to learn that the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. He was immediately given up by Voruz and the abbot to the duke, who had him conveyed to Gex by the captain of his guards. He asserted in vain that his only fault was being a friend of the huguenots and of the Swiss; Charles, in whose eyes that was a great crime, imprisoned him in the castle of Grolée, on the banks of the Rhone, two leagues from Belley.[252] This first imprisonment, which lasted two years, was a foretaste of his harsher and longer captivity in the castle of Chillon. The duke put the abbot in possession of the priory of St. Victor; Voruz received his two hundred florins; the wicked triumphed, and Bonivard in his solitude gave way to gloomy thoughts. Was it at the bottom of an obscure dungeon that the new times of light and liberty were to begin? The duke having struck the first blow, it was now the bishop’s turn. He was taking his holiday, travelling from Ripaille to Troches, from Troches to the castle of Bonne, thence to other adjoining places, and employing all his episcopal zeal in raising soldiers. On the 16th of August the peasants of these districts, who came to the market at Geneva, mentioned that the bishop was assembling armed men for his entrance into the city. The syndic De la Mare and one of his colleagues, alarmed for the future of the republic, set out immediately for Bonne, and commended the city to John’s episcopal tenderness. ‘Alas!’ they said, ‘it is stricken with the double scourge of the plague and the sword.’ The prelate, as false as his cousin, replied: ‘You have been deceived, gentlemen; I shall certainly enter Geneva to-morrow, but only with a hundred or a hundred and fifty footmen for my guard. I desire to live there merrily with the citizens and protect each one in his rights.’[253] De la Mare and his friend believed what John of Savoy told them, and made their report. The people of the city were somewhat reassured: that little weak and starveling bishop, who looked so like a corpse, seemed not a very formidable appearance to them. They resolved at least to hide the discontent and fears that they felt at heart. ‘The shops will be closed, as on a holiday,’ said the council, ‘and those who have horses will go out to meet his lordship.’