The third delinquent,—the State criminal, Portier,—remained. The matter appeared so serious to the procurator-general that he desired it should be communicated to the people. The Council General having met on the 8th February, Lambert ordered the letters found at the palace, as well as the duke’s blank warrants, to be read to the assembly. ‘What! a governor of Geneva invested with the temporalities of the sovereign power, with authority to punish citizens who maintain their political and religious rights; the constitution of the State trampled under foot by the prince-bishop; and the Duke of Savoy, that eternal enemy of Genevan independence, forcibly aiding this usurpation and violence!’ All this constituted a guilty plot, even in the eyes of right-minded catholics. The voice of the people and the voice of justice were in harmony. The procurator-general demanded that Portier should be brought before his judges. The trial was much slower than that of the two Pennets had been, for the Roman-catholics made every effort to save him, and even offered large sums of money. But the procurator-general and the huguenots represented continually that ‘there was a conspiracy against the liberties of the city;’ it was not possible to save the episcopal secretary. Yet Portier and his agents had merely begun to carry out the orders they had received; the bishop was the real criminal. His quality of prince covered his person, so that, even had he been in Geneva, not a hair of his head would have fallen. But Pierre de la Baume was to receive the punishment, which, by the will of God, falls upon unjust princes. He had desired to employ his power for the purpose of oppression, and God shattered that power. When the sealed letters of the bishop which gave Geneva a dictator were read in the assembly of the people, the citizens were shocked; a sullen silence betrayed their indignation; they seemed to hear the funeral knell of an ancient dynasty that had departed. The Genevese determined to break with the episcopal traditions, and to raise to the government none but men known by their attachment to the union of Geneva with Switzerland and to the cause of the Reformation. While, among the syndics retiring from office, there was only one who belonged to this category, four friends of independence were called by the people to the first position in the State. They were Michael Sept, one of the huguenots who, in 1526, had fled to Berne, and had brought back the Swiss alliance; Ami de Chapeaurouge, Aimé Curtet, and J. Duvillard. The executive council thus became a huguenot majority. It was the episcopal conspiracy that struck the decisive blow, that threw wide open the hitherto half-open door, and permitted the victorious Reformation to enter the city.[475] Footnote 464: Crespin, _Actes des Martyrs_, p. 114. Footnote 465: MSC. de Roset, liv. iii. ch. xxi.—MSC. de Gautier. Footnote 466: Registre du Conseil des 8 et 10 Février, 1534. Footnote 467: