to expect from Savoy; what had it to hope from the bishop? Pierre de la Baume, indignant at the duke's pretensions, had said to him one day proudly: 'I am subject only to the pope.'[484] He had lately softened down, in appearance at least, and was drawing nearer to Savoy, so that the Genevans said: 'Our prince is reconciled with our enemy.'[485] We are now transported into quite another sphere. If the duke wished to reign by force, the bishop desired to use stratagem. The pastor of Geneva was not in a position to build a fortress in the middle of the city; it was by means of negotiations and intrigues that he would crush the Reformation and liberty. The lion was succeeded by the serpent. Pierre de la Baume, knowing the influence Besançon Hugues had over his fellow-citizens, solicited his help. He wrote to him, during the last year of Besançon's life, a series of letters we have also had the good fortune to discover.[486] The bishop and the citizen of Geneva were not such good friends as they had been. The former addressed many reproaches to the latter, either because Hugues was dissatisfied on political grounds, or perhaps because his catholicism had cooled down a little in his frequent interviews with the reformed of Berne. [Sidenote: THE BISHOP'S SECRETARY IN GENEVA.] On the 11th of April 1532, the bishop, then at Arbois, impatient to recover his former power in Geneva, resolved to open the campaign, and wrote to Hugues: 'Besançon, I have always done for you everything that I could; you have seen it by the results; I do not speak to reproach you, but I am astonished that you should requite me so ill. If you had as good an affection for me, as I have given you opportunity, you would have _barked_ (aboyé) so well, that my authority would not have fallen to its present depression, and I should not have the trouble, which I must take, of restoring it. I well know the excuses that you can make.... None is so deaf as he that will not hear. Nevertheless I have trusted in you, and I still trust in your well-known fidelity. So act, I pray, that I may have cause to continue it. In a little time I shall send one of my people to Geneva on business; you will hear the rest from him. I pray God that He will give you, Besançon, all that you desire.'[487] Ten days later, Machard, the bishop's secretary, came from Arbois to Geneva, charged with a political mission, and bearer of another letter for Hugues, which, either on account of the delicate matters to which it related, or because Machard was to explain them verbally, is rather obscure. Hugues hastened to read the prelate's missive: 'I send my secretary,' said De la Baume, 'on certain business, which I have instructed him to communicate to you first. You will give credit to what he says in my name as if I said it myself. I desire that the affair in question may come to a good end, in order to gratify the princes from whom it proceeds (the emperor and the duke, no doubt). Set