Caring little for the political or religious ideas with which Pontverre was animated, they sought amusement, plunder, and the gratification of their hatred against the citizens. They were observed at a distance, with their mounted followers, on the high roads, and they were not idle. They allowed nobody to enter the city, and carried off property, provisions, and cattle. The peasants and the Genevan merchants, so disgracefully plundered, asked each other if the tottering episcopal throne was to be upheld by _banditti_.... 'If you return,' said these noble highwaymen, 'we will _hang you up by the neck_.' Nor was that all: several nobles, whose castles were near the water, resorted to piracy on the lake: they pillaged the country-houses near the shore, imprisoned the men, insulted the women, and cut off all communication with Switzerland. [Sidenote: NOBLES TURN HIGHWAYMEN.] One difficulty, however, occurred to these noble robbers: they chanced to maltreat, without their knowing it, some of their own party, who were coming from German Switzerland. Having been much reproached for this, they took counsel on the road: 'What must we do,' they asked, 'to distinguish the Genevans?' They hit upon a curious shibboleth. As soon as they caught sight of any travellers in the distance, they spurred their horses, galloped up, and put some ordinary question to the strangers, 'examining in this way all who passed to and fro.' If the travellers replied in French, the language of Geneva, the knightly highwaymen declared they were _huguenots_, and immediately carried them off, goods and all. If the victims complained, they were not listened to; and even when they came from the banks of the Loire and the Seine, they were taken and shut up in the nearest castle. Many messengers from France to the Swiss cantons, who spoke like the Genevans, were arrested in this way.