The corps nearest to Geneva appeared. Savoyard troops under the command of Mauloz, castellan of Gaillard, reached their station in front of the St. Antoine Gate. Armed men from Chablais advanced along the Thonon road as far as Jargonnant, in front of the Rive gate. Other bands prepared to enter by the gate on the side of Arve and Plainpalais. Barks and boats filled with soldiers arrived in the waters that bathed the city. The army that was to cross the Jura, and other corps, did not appear; but the assembled forces were sufficient for the coup-de-main.[601] [Sidenote: Levrat, The Traitor.] While these manœuvres were going on without, everything seemed going on well within. The man entrusted with the care of the artillery, and who was called Le Bossu (the Hunchback), had been bribed. In the evening Jean Levrat, ‘one of the most active of the traitors,’ had prowled about his dwelling, and the keeper, not wishing to be compromised, had handed him through a loophole the keys of the tower of Rive, where the cannons had been stored. Levrat and his accomplices spiked several, and Le Bossu had filled others with hay. The blacksmith had counterfeited the keys of the city, and made iron implements to break down the gates.[602] The most lively emotion prevailed in the houses of all the catholics. Party walls had been broken through, so that they could go from one to another and concert matters secretly. Michael Guillet, Thomas Moine, Jacques Malbuisson, De Prato, Jean Levrat, and the Sire de Pesmes, went to and fro watching that no man shrank back. Throughout the whole of the 30th of July the Councils and the reformed remained in complete ignorance of the blow that was impending. They knew of the threats, but did not believe there was any danger, so that in the evening of the 30th they had gone to rest as quietly as usual. In the early part of the night a stranger desired to speak with the premier-syndic on urgent business. Michael Sept received him. ‘I am from Dauphiny,’ said the man: ‘I am a hearer of the Word of God, and should grieve to see Geneva and the Gospel brought to destruction. The duke’s army is marching upon your city; a number of soldiers are already assembled all round you, and very early this morning the bishop left Chambéry to make his entrance among you.’ It was a fellow-countryman of Farel and Froment that undertook to save Geneva. But was there still time? The premier-syndic immediately communicated the intelligence to his colleagues, and it was resolved to arrest some of those who were always ready to make common cause with the enemy outside. The syndics questioned them, confronted them with one another, and gradually saw the horrible plot unravelled, of which they had until that moment been ignorant.[603] All the citizens upon whom they could rely were called to arms. It was not yet midnight.