While these dangers were accumulating on the heads of the friends of the Reformation in Geneva itself, perils not less great were gathering round the city. People arriving from the country on the left bank of the Rhone and of the lake reported that armed Friburgers and Savoyards were assembling in great numbers at the castle of Gaillard, and that one of the Wernlis commanded a part of them. It was well known that this person, exasperated by the death of his relative the canon, combined in his heart, along with the love and respect he bore to his memory, a more energetic sentiment—that of revenge. The knights and soldiers who gathered round him caught the infection of his anger. But not at Gaillard only were armed men assembling, according to the reports of the country people: there were some higher up, in the direction of the mountains, at Etrembières, where there was a ferry over the Arve to the _mandement_ of Mornex. Others were assembling higher still around the picturesque hill of Montoux, and especially at the village of Collonges, at the foot of the hill. At the same time, the people who came to Geneva from the right bank of the Rhone and the lake, from the side of the Jura, brought similar tidings, and spoke of armed men in the Gex district, and particularly at the Grand Saconnex, three-quarters of a league from Geneva. The city was beginning to be surrounded by its enemies.[789] The time seemed near when the projects conceived by the bishop at Arbois were about to be realised. That prelate, who reproached his friend Besançon Hugues for not having '_barked_' loud enough to prevent the fall of his authority, proposed not only to bark himself against the '_wolves_,' but also to bite them. One of those priests whom Rome had raised to the rank of princes of nations had said: 'I am accustomed to act vigorously.... I shall consider what it must be.' The pontiff was preparing to fulfil his own prophecies. [Sidenote: GENEVA AND CALVIN.] The future of Geneva was indeed threatening. On the 10th of July a gloomy veil seemed to be closing over that noble city. A fanatical party was preparing the shroud in which it designed to bury the independence of the citizens and the Reformation of the Church. That city, for which many persons had already anticipated a more glorious destiny, was about to be reduced to a mere provincial town, occupying an undistinguished place in the world, and subject to the enervating influence of Rome, without life and without liberty. But other things were written in heaven. God was preparing both Geneva and Calvin to deliver battle together, on the result of which was to depend the triumph of the Gospel and the liberty of modern nations. And to prepare for these glorious events, the steps of the great reformer were soon to be directed, undesignedly on his part, towards that small but energetic city, unique of its kind in Europe, and of which the man of God was not then thinking.