Such are the threatening words which close the correspondence of Pierre de la Baume with Besançon Hugues. Until now all traces of this great citizen had been lost after the 26th September 1532. If the letter we have just given belongs to this year, that limit would be shortened by two months. He must have died between the 28th November 1532 and the 18th February 1533.[492] Thus the bishop, continually engrossed with Geneva, thought of nothing but recovering his former power. But the independence of that city had enemies more formidable still. Charles V. had ordered the Genevans to drive the Reformation from their walls. 'Full of anxiety for your soul's health,' he wrote to them, 'and learning that certain new opinions and sects are beginning to swarm among you,[493] we exhort you seriously not to admit them, to extirpate them, and to set about it with the utmost diligence, not to permit anything to be taught among you in the leastwise opposed to the decrees and traditions of your ancestors; on the contrary, to preserve with unshaken constancy the faith, rites, and ceremonies that you have received from your fathers. You will thus receive a worthy reward from Almighty God, and will merit from us every sort of gratitude.' Geneva had not obeyed the orders of the puissant emperor. The affairs of Germany had at first prevented him from constraining the little city to follow his sovereign orders, which even the barbarous tribes of the new world obeyed. But now the treaty of Nuremberg was signed; Charles having come to terms with the protestants of Germany might easily keep the promise he had made to his brother-in-law through Bellegarde, and assist him against the huguenots of Geneva. [Sidenote: FREEDOM IN SIGHT.] The perfidious murderer of Levrier was beginning to hope that it would be possible to found a stronghold in Geneva, with its ditches and lofty walls, flanked with towers and bastions, and a strong garrison of halberdiers, arquebusiers, and artillerymen, who would keep the city and country in complete subjection under the yoke of their master. When Gessler was sent in the name of Austria to destroy the liberties of the Swiss, did he not build a fortress above Altorf—_Zwing-Uri_, the yoke of Uri? and had not the free children of those mountains to atone for the smallest sparks of independence by long and costly imprisonment in gloomy dungeons? Had not Pharaoh set the example in Egypt?... Why should not they do the same to subdue the huguenots? Fortresses, cannons, arquebusses, chains ... this was what Geneva had to expect. Before any great length of time the Genevans were really to see a formidable force marching against them, commissioned to carry out the plans of the emperor and the duke. But God's providence had always kept the city, and at this very moment a new force, the pledge of liberty, was about to be given it. The Gospel of the Son of God was about to enter its walls. But _he whom the Son maketh free, shall be free indeed_.