If this election by the chapter had been sustained, it is probable that M. de Gingins would have lived on good terms with the council and citizens, and that harmony would have been preserved. But the appointment of bishops, which had in olden times belonged to the clergy and the people, had passed almost everywhere to the prince and the pope. The election of a superior by the subordinates had given way to the nomination of an inferior by a superior. This was a misfortune: nothing secures a good election like the first of these two systems, for the interest and honour of the governed is always to have good governors. On the other hand, princes or popes generally choose strangers or favourites, who win neither the affection nor esteem of their flocks or of the inferior clergy. The last episcopal elections at Geneva, by separating the episcopacy from the people and the clergy, deprived the Church of the strength it so much needed, and facilitated the Reformation. Duke Charles understood the importance of the crisis. This prince who filled for half a century the throne of Savoy and Piedmont, was all his life the implacable enemy of Geneva. Weak but irritable, impatient of all opposition yet undecided, proud, awkward, wilful, fond of pomp but without grandeur, stiff but wanting firmness, not daring to face the strong, but always ready to be avenged on the weak, he had but one passion--one mania rather: to possess Geneva. For that he needed a docile instrument to lend a hand to his ambitious designs--a bishop with whom he could do what he pleased. Accordingly he looked around him for some one to oppose to the people’s candidate, and he soon hit upon the man. In every party of pleasure at court there was sure to be found a little man, weak, slender, ill-made, awkward, vile in body but still more so in mind, without regard for his honour, inclined rather to do evil than good, and suffering under a disease the consequence of his debauchery. This wretch was John, son of a wench of Angers (_communis generis_, says Bonivard) whose house was open to everybody, priests and laymen alike; sparely liberal with her money (for she had not the means) ‘she was over-free with her venal affections.’ Francis of Savoy, the third of the pope-duke’s grandsons, who had occupied in turn the episcopal throne of Geneva, and who was also archbishop of Aux and bishop of Angers, used to ‘junket with her like the rest.’ This woman was about to become a mother, ‘but she knew not,’ says the chronicler, ‘whom to select as the father; the bishop being the richest of all her lovers, she fathered the child upon him, and it was reared at the expense of the putative parent.’ The Bishop of Angers not caring to have this child in his diocese, sent it to his old episcopal city, where there were people devoted to him.[49] The poor little sickly child was accordingly brought to Geneva, and there he lived meanly until being called to the court of Turin, he had a certain retinue