On Saturday, the 7th of March, the Bernese ambassadors attended the evangelical assembly for the last time. They were leaving Farel, Viret, and Froment without protection in the midst of deadly enemies, and without force to resist them alone. Accordingly, as soon as the service was ended, they rose and said: ‘Farewell, gentlemen of Geneva, we commend our preachers to you.’[500]—‘It is not necessary to commend them,’ answered a Genevese, ‘we know the danger they incur in trying to rescue the people from the slavery into which they have fallen.’ As he left the hall, Claude Bernard took the three evangelists home to his house, where they lived henceforward. De la Maisonneuve departed about the same time as the Bernese, on his way to Frankfort on business. At a date we cannot fix he took Farel and Viret to Lausanne to ‘similarly seduce’ the inhabitants of that city; but the Lausannese, the priests and their friends (for the middle-class was favorable to the Reform), ‘drove the preachers away.’ It is scarcely probable that the two reformers should have chosen to leave Geneva at the important epoch of which we are treating; and yet a contemporary document would lead us to believe so. When De la Maisonneuve reached Frankfort, he conversed with the Lutherans and communicated, as it would seem, according to the ritual of Luther.[501] Shortly after this, Portier was convicted of having conspired with the bishop against the liberty of the city, and condemned to lose his head. The law having punished the guilty, the public conscience was satisfied. It is necessary that justice should reign among nations; when it is trampled under foot and the guilty are held to be innocent, there rises in the breasts of the good a cry of sorrow, we will not say of revenge. But that condemnation was big with important consequences for Geneva; it was, says the chronicler, ‘a terror to the creatures of the bishop.’ As Portier had only carried out the orders of the prince, the condemnation of the servant was that of the master. The episcopal agents began to understand that they must obey the laws and pay respect to lay tribunals. The power of the episcopal faction was broken.[502] [Sidenote: Farel’s Progress.]