Cartelier had but a few minutes more to live, when the bishop's steward was seen hurrying forward with letters of grace, commuting the capital punishment into a fine of six thousand golden crowns payable to the prelate and to the city. To spare the life of the wretched man might have been an act of mercy and equity, especially as his crimes were political; but the angry youths who surrounded the criminal ascribed the bishop's clemency to his covetousness and to the hatred he bore the cause of independence. They desired the execution of the condemned man. Twice the hangman removed the rope, and twice these exasperated young men replaced it round Cartelier's neck. They yielded at last, however, and were satisfied with having made the conspirator feel all the anguish of death. Cartelier was set at liberty. When the bishop was informed of what had happened, he became afraid, imagining his authority compromised and his power endangered. 'It was for good reasons,' he wrote to the syndics, 'that I pardoned Cartelier; however, write and tell me if the people are inclined to revolt on account of this pardon.'[710] The people did not revolt, and the rich culprit, having paid the fine, retired quietly to Bourg in Bresse, whence he had come. [Sidenote: THE BISHOP'S HESITATION.] The bishop, who had first sentenced, then pardoned, and then repented of his pardon, was continually hesitating, and did not know what party to side with. He was not devoted body and soul to the duke, like his predecessor. Placed between the Savoyards and the huguenots, he was at heart, equally afraid of both, and by turns flung himself into the arms of opposite parties. He was like a stag between two packs of hounds, always afraid and panting. 'I write _angrily_,' he says in his letters: he was, indeed, always angry with one party or the other. Even the canons, his natural friends, and the members of his council aroused his fears, and not without cause; for these reverend persons had no confidence either in the bishop's character or in the brigandage of the gentry of the neighbourhood. Messieurs De Lutry, De Montrotier, De Lucinge, De St. Martin, and other canons said that the temporal authority of the prelate was too weak to maintain order; that the sword of a secular prince was wanted, and at the bottom of their hearts they called for the duke. 'Ah!' said La Baume to Hugues, 'the chapter is a _poisoned_ body;' he called the canons thieves and robbers: _Ille fur et latro est_, he said of one of them. The episcopal office appeared a heavy burden to him; but it put him in a position to give good dinners to his friends, and that was one of the most important duties of his life. 'I have wine for the winter,' he wrote in a postscript to the letter in which he made these complaints, 'and plenty to entertain you with.'[711] Such were his episcopal consolations. [Footnote 699: Psalm i.] [Footnote 700: M. Michel Chevalier, on the Prosperity of Protestant Nations.]