The council sent for the vicar-general: 'We have a great complaint to make,' they told him. 'No remedy has been applied to the depravity and scandalous conduct of the ecclesiastics, who are the cause of all kinds of irregularity. Exert your authority without waiting until the secular power is compelled to interfere.' It would appear that, as the vicar held out no great hopes of amendment, the council were of opinion that, after condemning the laymen who walked about in the churches, they ought also to condemn the priests who were caught in disorderly houses. One councillor imagined it would be but fair to yoke, so to say, these two different kinds of delinquents to the same car. A second resolution was therefore adopted by the council, which, never losing sight of the necessity of protecting the city against Savoy, ordered 'that the priests should forthwith forsake their evil ways under penalty of building three toises of the wall of St. Gervais, in company with the others.'[818] Thus the forerunners of protestantism and the profligate priests were ordered to labour together at the same task in the fosses of St. Gervais. The latter were indignant at being placed in the same rank with the former, and thought their dignity compromised by the singular decree which forced them to supply the heretics with mortar. It would appear, however, that the two orders were not very strictly observed, that wicked ecclesiastics continued to gratify their appetites, and that the wall advanced but slowly. 'The canons, priests, and friars are incorrigible,' said the people; 'they are jovial fellows, fond of drinking, and rear their bastard children openly. How can the Church be scandalised at such a course of life, when even the popes set the example?'[819]