While these things were going on, the huguenots and evangelicals, seized by the bishop's order, were still in prison bound hand and foot. Pierre Vandel, Claude Pasta, the Sire de Compey, Domaine D'Arlod, the energetic Ami Perrin and others, not forgetting Jaquéma, awaited their fate in the gloomy vaults of the episcopal residence. In every house in Geneva and at the town-hall people were constantly talking of them. 'The prisoners,' they said, 'are kept in close confinement.' Such severity excited universal compassion, and the secretary of council mentions it in the Registers.[786] However if the bishop had been able to deprive them of freedom of motion, there was another he could not take from them, which was a sweet consolation for those who had received the gospel in their hearts. 'Though they were bound and made fast in the stocks,' says Calvin, 'still while praying they praised God.' It is of Paul and Silas, shut up in the prison at Philippi, of whom the reformer is speaking; but what he says of the liberty of prayer, which exists even in spite of chains, may be applied to some of those who were now in the prelate's dungeons. Just at this time a report circulated through the city that the bishop was secretly preparing boats for the removal of the prisoners to some castle. It was said that certain stout watermen were ready to grasp the oar, that an armed force would accompany the captives, and that as soon the episcopal officers were upon the open lake they would laugh at the syndics and the huguenots. These reports still more excited the anger of the citizens. One of them, a daring man named Pierre Verne, watching the boats moored on the shore, sought the means of preventing this unlawful abduction: he thought he had found one, simple and in his opinion infallible, and waited (as we shall see presently) until the veil of night concealed him from the eyes of the enemy.[787] If the prince's councillors were contriving how to get the huguenot captives away, certain of the mamelukes were vexed that there were still so many at liberty, and that the bishop was so slow in apprehending them all without exception. It seemed to them that the _coup d'état_, or rather _coup de main_, of which they had dreamt was long in coming; and they knew that if a bold stroke is to succeed, the execution must be prompt. Some of them began therefore to make amends for official slowness by separate acts of violence. [Sidenote: ATTEMPT TO MURDER CURTET.]