In spite of the loyal assurances of Besançon Hugues, the bishop was disturbed. Sitting with liberty at his side, he felt ill at ease; and the terror spreading through the ranks of the clergy could not fail to reach him. If the Bishop of Geneva should be deprived of his principality, who can tell if men will not one day deprive the pope of his kingship? The alarm of the canons, priests, and friends of the papacy continued to increase. Did they not know that the Reformation was daily gaining ground in many of the confederated states? Friburg, indeed, was still catholic; but Zurich was no longer so, and everything announced that Berne would soon secede. The great light was to come from another country, from a country that spoke the language of Geneva; but Geneva was then receiving from Switzerland the first gleams that precede the day. Some Genevans were already beginning to profess, rather undisguisedly, their new religious tendencies; Robert Vandel, the bishop’s friend, openly defended the Reformation. ‘Sire Robert is not very good for Friburg,’ said some; ‘but he is good for Berne, _very good_!’ which meant that he preferred Holy Scripture to the pope. The priests said that if Geneva was united to Switzerland, there was an end of the privileges of the clergy; that simple christians would begin to occupy themselves with religion; and that in Geneva, as in Basle, Schaffhausen, and Berne, laymen would talk about the faith of the Church. Now there was nothing of which the clergy were more afraid. The ministers of the Romish religion, instead of examining the Scriptures, of finding in them doctrines capable of satisfying the wants of man, and of propagating them by mild persuasion, were occupied with very different matters, and would not suffer any one but themselves to think even of the Bible and its contents. Never was a calling made a more thorough fiction. It was said of them: _They have taken away the key of knowledge; they enter not in themselves, and them that were entering in they hindered_.