Philip Berthelier, a man of indomitable courage, untiring activity, enthusiastic for independence and the ancient rights of liberty, but infected with the general disease, now put the plan he had conceived into execution, and resolved to turn against Savoy the dissolute habits with which she had endowed his country. He took part in all their feasts, banquets, and debaucheries; drank, laughed, and sang with the youth of Geneva. There was not an entertainment at which he was not present: ‘_Bonus civis, malus homo_, a good citizen, but a bad man,’ they said of him. ‘Yes, _malus homo_,’ he replied; ‘but since good citizens will not risk their comforts in an enterprise of which they despair, I must save liberty by means of madmen.’ He employed his practical understanding and profound sagacity in winning men over,[90] and he attained the end he had set before him. The assemblies of the Genevan youth immediately changed in character. Philibert the Fair had made them a school of slavery; Philibert Berthelier made them a school of liberty. Those who opposed the usurpations of the Savoyard princes, boldly held their meetings at these joyous and noisy feasts. The great citizen, as if he had been invested with some magic charm, had entirely changed the Genevan mind, and, holding it in his hand, made it do whatever he pleased. Sarcasms were heaped upon the bishop and the duke’s partisans, and every jest was greeted with loud bursts of laughter and applause. If any episcopal officer committed an illegality, information was given to these strange parliaments, and these redressors of wrong undertook to see the victim righted. When the Savoyard party put themselves without the law, the Genevan party did the same, and the war began.