As the cause of Savoy was lost, the bishop, so long wavering, made a show of placing himself on the side of the free and the bold. He sent Pierre Bertholo to carry this important news to Jean Philippe and all those exiles of whom he was so afraid. The latter had not lost their time; they endeavoured to enlighten the Swiss, and Hugues continually argued and repeated that Geneva was not under subjection to the duke. At this time Bertholo arrived. ‘The ordinances of Savoy are repealed,’ he told the refugees; ‘patriots replace the serviles everywhere, and one of you has been elected syndic--Jean Philippe!’ They could hardly believe this news. What! one of these wretched fugitives, of these _mendicants_ (as their enemies called them), raised by the people of Geneva to the head of the State!... What a refutation of the ducal calumnies! But the ‘foreigners’ did not forget themselves in the joy which this message caused them. Taking Bertholo with them, they proceeded to the Bernese council, and reported the unexpected intelligence brought by the messenger. ‘Up to the present time,’ said the avoyer, ‘I have invited Besançon Hugues alone, as your chief, to sit down at my side; now, Messire Jean Philippe, take your seat above Besançon, as syndic of Geneva.’ The alliance would no longer meet with obstacles. ‘We accept you as fellow-freemen,’ continued the avoyer, ‘without heed to those growlers and their threats, which do not last long now-a-days.’[400] The people of Geneva were about to rise, if we may so speak, from the grave. They had acted with decision, with energy, with unwavering firmness. They desired to have for their magistrates none but men able to maintain their laws and independence, and had boldly erased from the code of the republic all ordinances contrary to the liberties of Geneva. Accordingly, ‘a person of mark,’ who lived at the beginning of the seventeenth century, exclaimed, after studying these facts: ‘This history is a marvellous one, and calls to my mind a tract in the _Philetes_ of Plato, touching the moral good comprised in the three ideas: _Reality_, _Proportion_, and _Truth_. It is full of the special marks of the wise and merciful providence of God, who has guided, up to this present hour, this _ship of his miracles_ through an infinity of shoals. The more thoroughly we contemplate human action, so much the deeper appear the counsels of God.’[401] What we are about to see appears to confirm these words. CHAPTER XXVII. GENEVA AND THE SWISS ALLIED. THE BISHOP, THE DUCALS, AND THE CANONS ESCAPE. JOY OF THE PEOPLE. (FEBRUARY TO AUGUST 1526.)