The Savoyard party, who still had the power in their hands, were firmly resolved not to give it up. The episcopal council sat all night. The syndics, the vicar, and the vidame in particular, were losing their heads. To prevent the movement from succeeding, they took useless and contradictory steps, calculated rather to increase the irritation in men’s minds: nothing prospered with them. ‘Fancy how surprised they are,’ wrote the worthy Porral to Hugues. ‘They will go mad, please God. The vidame is always indoors with the gout; may God keep him there! They have forbidden the boatmen to ferry anybody over the water at night.... They are afraid that God will give them what they deserve.’ The procurator-fiscal issued writs against all who had signed the protest. ‘If you will not answer according to my pleasure,’ he said to them, ‘I will force you to speak.’--‘Really,’ said Porral, who already felt the need of another liberty than political liberty, ‘really, I think that after they have compelled us to deny our parents, neighbours, and friends, they will constrain us next to deny God himself.’ Yet, if the party of Savoy appeared ‘sick,’ that of liberty was still very weak. Both portions of the community turned at the same time towards the bishop. ‘His authority is in question,’ said certain patriots; ‘he will side with us against Savoy. Let us summon him.’--‘The bishop cannot side with rebels,’ said the episcopal council and the mamelukes; ‘let us hasten his return.’ As the prelate was still beyond the Alps, the two parties wrote to him, each for itself: ‘Return speedily; without you we can do nothing.’[394] This was embarrassing to Pierre de la Baume. On the one hand, he clung to his principality, and at certain moments he would have withstood the duke; but on the other hand, he felt himself unable to resist that prince, and thus he fluctuated perpetually between duty and fear. He started for Geneva, not knowing what he would do there.