But the Duke of Savoy had no sooner heard of this than he claimed the guns from the monastery. The Council of Fifty was convened to discuss the affair, and Berthelier did not stand alone in supporting the rights of the city. A young citizen of twenty-five, of mild yet intrepid temper, calm and yet active, a friend to law and liberty, without meanness and without arrogance, and who had within him deep-seated and vigorous powers,--this man feared not to provoke a contest between Geneva and the most formidable of his neighbours. He was Besançon Hugues, who had just lost his father and was beginning to enter into public life. One idea governed him: to maintain the independence of his country and resist the usurpations of Savoy, even should it draw upon him the duke’s hatred. ‘In the name of the people,’ he said, ‘I oppose the surrender of this artillery to his Highness, the city cannot spare them.’ The four guns remained at Geneva, but from that hour Charles III. looked with an angry eye upon Berthelier, Hugues, and Bonivard. ‘I will be even with them,’ said he.--‘When I paid him my respects after the death of my uncle,’ said Bonivard, ‘his Highness turned up his nose at me.’[76] Charles III., son of Philip Lackland, was not much like that adventurous prince. When Philip reached a certain age, he became reformed; and after having several natural children, he married Margaret of Bourbon, and on her death Claudine of Penthievre or Brittany, and in 1496 ascended the throne of Piedmont and Savoy. Charles III., his son by the second wife, rather took after his grandfather Duke Louis; like him he was steady but weak, submissive to his wife, and inherited from Monsieur only his bursts of passion. His understanding was not large; but his councillors who were very able made up for this. One single thought seemed to possess him: to annex Geneva to Savoy. It was almost his whole policy. By grasping after Geneva he lost his principalities. Æsop’s fable of the dog and the shadow has never been better illustrated.