When these ladies met, they held a parliament of a new sort; and their speeches were far more impassioned than those of the men. They had no doubt that their husbands would put all their adversaries to death, but were vexed to think that their wives would be left alive. 'If it should happen,' said one of them, 'that our husbands fight against the unbelievers, let us also make war and _kill their heretic wives, in order that the breed may be extirpated_.'[670] This was the only way, these pious ladies thought, of preserving Geneva catholic; if the wives and children were spared, the heresy would shoot forth again in a few years. A unanimous cry of approval was raised by the women, and even by the accompanying children, and the Amazons immediately prepared for the combat. They armed their children, distributing little hatchets and swords among them; when there were no more weapons to give out, their mothers told them to fill their hats and caps with stones. They, too, fiercely gathered up their aprons, which they filled with missiles. Sister Jeanne does not omit a single detail in her narrative, for it is of this that she is most proud. Some of these women had stationed themselves at the windows to crush the evangelicals at the moment of battle by pouring their missiles down upon them; but the more determined marched with the children to the Molard, where they arrived with loud shouts. Strange madness! as if God who requires in the Christian woman _a meek and quiet spirit_, and forbids her to be adorned 'with braided hair and costly array,' did not all the more forbid her to arm herself with stones and march to battle. Frenzied and guilty women! Some huguenots, observing them from afar, asked with astonishment what could be the meaning of such a singular assemblage. They seemed to resemble those druidesses who (as it is related) when their sanctuary was threatened, ran to and fro along the shore of the lake, in black robes with hair dishevelled, and waving torches in their hands.[671]