The duke had calculated rightly when reckoning on republican vanity. Every one was busied in preparing to receive the prince, with his wife and courtiers, for the Genevese desired that the pomps of this fête should infinitely surpass those of the bishop’s reception. There were (so to say) two men in these citizens: one, full of lofty aspirations, longed for truth and liberty; but the other, full of vanity and fond of pleasure, allowed himself to be seduced by luxury and the diversions of a court. The duke and the bishop would never have succeeded in ruining Geneva; but if Geneva united with them, her ruin seemed inevitable. All heads were turned. ‘I shall be dressed more expensively than you on the day of the duchess’s entrance,’ said Jean de Malbuisson to Jean Philippe, afterwards first syndic. Upon which, Philippe, one of the proudest huguenots, ordered a magnificent dress of satin, taffeta, velvet, and silver, which cost him forty-eight crowns of the sun. Malbuisson was filled with jealousy and anger, and the syndics were compelled to interfere to appease this strife of vanity.[312] These vain republicans, charmed at the honour to be done them by the daughter of the king of Portugal, wished to strew her path with roses. Portugal, governed by the famous dynasty of Aviz, renowned by the expeditions of Diaz, Vasco de Gama, and Cabral, and by the conquests of Albuquerque, was then overflowing with riches, was a naval power of the first order, and was at the height of its greatness. It was no small thing in the eyes of the burgesses of the city of the Leman that the glory, which filled the most distant seas with its splendour, should shed a few sparks of its brilliancy on the shores of an unknown lake. The duke had no doubt that these citizens, so fond of pleasure, would quietly submit to the claims which beauty laid upon them, and that Geneva would be his. At last the 4th of August arrived, and all the city hastened to the banks of the Arve to meet the young and charming duchess; the women had the foremost place in this Genevese procession. A battalion of amazons, composed of three hundred of the youngest and most beautiful persons in Geneva, appeared first. They wore the colours of the duchess, blue and white; their skirts, as was the fashion with the warlike damsels of antiquity, were tucked up to the knee; and each one carried in her right hand a javelin, and in her left a small shield. At the head as captain was the wife of the Seignior d’Avully, who, being a Spaniard, could speak to the duchess in her own language: in the middle was the standard-bearer, ‘a tall and beautiful woman, waving the colours like a soldier who had done nothing else all his life.’