Diesbach and his colleagues were confounded, and looked at one another with astonishment. 'Did not Monsieur of Savoy assure us,' they said, 'that, except some twenty-five or thirty citizens, all the people were favourable to him?'—'And I too know,' said a stranger, whose name has not been handed down to us, 'that if the alliance had been broken, the duke would have entered Geneva and put thirty-two citizens to death.'[810] 'Come with us,' said the most respected men in Geneva; and, laying their charters before the ambassadors, they proved by these documents that they were free to contract an alliance with the cantons. The delegates from Berne, Friburg, Zurich, Basle, and Soleure ordered their horses to be got ready. Some huguenots assembled in the street, and shouted out, just as the Bernese lords were getting into their saddles: 'We would sooner destroy the city, sooner sacrifice our wives, our children, and ourselves, than consent to revoke the alliance.' When Diesbach made a report of his mission at Berne, he found means to gloss over his defeat a little: 'There were a thousand people at the general council,' he said with some exaggeration; 'only _one_ person [he meant the president] protested against the rupture of the alliance; upon which _all the rest joined in with him_!'... Did he not know that it was quite regular for a proposition to be made by _one_ person, and to be carried by a whole nation?[811] [Sidenote: FIRMNESS OF THE GENEVANS.] A new spirit, unknown to their ancestors, now began to animate many of the Genevans. Ab Hofen's mission had not been without effect. Besides a goodly number of persons, who were called indeed 'by the name of Luther,' but whose sole idea of reform was not to fast in Lent and not to cross themselves during divine worship, there were others who desired to receive the Word of God and to follow it. The Romish clergy understood this well. 'If these Genevans cling so much to the Swiss,' said the priests at their meetings, 'it is in order that they may profess _heresy_ freely. If they succeed, we shall perhaps see Savoy, Aosta, and other countries of Italy reforming themselves likewise.'