It followed, among other things, that with the connivance of Rome, the princes of Savoy might become princes of Geneva. But could they insure this connivance? From that moment the activity of the court of Turin was employed in making interest with the popes in order to obtain the grant of the bishopric of Geneva for one of the princes or creatures of Savoy. A singular circumstance favoured this remarkable intrigue. Duke Amadeus VIII., who had been rejected by the citizens a few years before, succeeded in an unexpected manner. In 1434 having abdicated in favour of his eldest son, he assumed the hermit’s frock at Ripaille on the Lake of Geneva; and the Council of Basle having nominated him pope, he took the name of Felix V. and made use of his pontifical authority to create himself bishop and prince of Geneva. A pope making himself a bishop ... strange thing indeed! Here is the key to the enigma: the pope was a prince of Savoy: the see was the see of Geneva. Savoy desired to have Geneva at any price: one might almost say that Pope Felix thought it an advancement in dignity to become a Genevan bishop. It is true that Felix was pope according to the episcopal, not the papal, system; having been elected by a council, he was forced to resign in consequence of the desertion of the majority of European princes. Geneva and Ripaille consoled him for Rome. As bishop and prince of Geneva, he respected the franchises of his new acquisition; but the poor city was fated somewhat later to serve as food to the offspring of this bird of prey. In 1451, Amadeus being dead, Peter of Savoy, a child eight or ten years old, grandson of the pope, hermit, and bishop, mounted the episcopal throne of Geneva; in 1460 came John Louis, another grandson, twelve years of age; and in 1482 Francis, a third grandson. To the Genevans the family of the pope seemed inexhaustible. These bishops and their governors were as leeches sucking Geneva even to the bones and marrow. Their mother, Anne of Cyprus, had brought with her to Savoy a number of ‘Cypriote leeches’ as they were called, and after they had drained the blood of her husband’s states, she launched them on the states of her children. One Cypriote prelate, Thomas de Sur, whom she had appointed governor to little Bishop Peter, particularly distinguished himself in the art of robbing citizens of their money and their liberty. It was Bishop John Louis, the least wicked of the three brothers, who inflicted the most terrible blow on Geneva. We shall tell how that happened; for this dramatic episode is a picture of manners, carrying us back to Geneva with its bishops and its princes, and showing us the family of that Charles III. who was in the sixteenth century the constant enemy of the liberties and Reformation of the city.