At the same time the syndics waited upon the bishop’s official; they would have liked for the bishop himself to plead their cause before the pope. ‘If my lord consents to pass the mountains and support us at Rome,’ said they, ‘we will give him a hundred gold crowns, and will add five-and-twenty for you.’ The official smiled: ‘A hundred crowns!’ he said, ‘that will not be enough to shoe his horses.’--‘We will give him two hundred, then,’ answered the syndics. The bishop, who was always short of money, put this sum into his purse, and then endeavoured to arrange the matter without disturbing himself, by merely sending a deputy to Chambéry. Never was deputy worse received. The president of the ducal council, annoyed that so small a city should dare resist a prince so mighty as his master, looked contemptuously at the deputy and exclaimed: ‘The duke is sovereign prince of Geneva. What was Geneva a hundred years ago? a paltry town. Who is it that made this town into a city? The duke’s subjects who owe him toll and service.[364] The Genevans desire us to cancel the penalties pronounced against them.... Ha, ha! Messieurs of Geneva, we will increase them. If within a month from this you do not make your submission, we will send you so many soldiers, that you must e’en take the trouble to obey his Highness.’ The destruction of the liberties of Geneva seemed to be at hand. The Genevans now had recourse to the bishop a second time, and conjured him to pass the Alps. Between this second demand and the first, many events had occurred in the political world. Pierre de la Baume was a zealous agent of the imperialist party, and the emperor had informed him that he wanted him for certain matters. Flattered that Charles V. should send for him, he appeared to grant the Genevese their prayer. ‘I will go,’ he said, and immediately quitted Geneva. Bonivard, who knew La Baume well, smiled as he saw the simple burgesses giving their prince-bishop two hundred crowns to defend them. ‘He is a great spendthrift,’ said the prior, ‘and in his eyes the sovereign virtue of a prelate consists in keeping a good table and good wine; he indulges beyond measure. Besides, he is very liberal to women, and strives to show the nobility of his descent by great pomp and not by virtue.... You have given him two hundred crowns ... what will he do with the money? He will gamble or squander it away in some other manner.’[365] And in fact he had hardly arrived at Turin, when, without pleading the cause of Geneva, without visiting Rome to defend it before the pope, he set off instantly for Milan, where, as agent of Charles V., he plotted against Francis I. But of the pope and of Geneva, not a word.