Baudichon de la Maisonneuve and Janin re-entered Geneva the day after that on which the final order to demolish the suburbs was given. The captain of the Lutherans was restored to his country at the very moment when the deadliest blows were aimed at it. The coincidence was remarkable. The return of these two energetic citizens could not but give a fresh impetus to the resolution to sacrifice one half of the city in order to save the other. The first walls destined to fall were those of the monastery of St. Victor, which, as it stood at the gate of the city, might easily be occupied by the enemy’s army as an advanced post.[637] There were no tears shed over the destruction of that building, except such as might have been drawn down by the thought of its antiquity. Ever since Bonivard the prior had been prisoner at Chillon, the monks had shaken off every kind of restraint, and the monastery had become a sty of scandals and disorders. The friars had been in the habit of frequenting certain houses of ill fame in their suburbs; but now the convent was the scene of their continual orgies. No sooner was there a talk of destroying that nest of debauchery than the reprobates exhibited the most insatiable greediness. The monks and their mistresses began to pillage the monastery; they tore down and carried away everything that was of any value; at night, and sometimes even during the day, they were seen leaving the monastery with bundles, and hiding their plunder in the adjoining houses. The priory was thus not only emptied, but almost stripped to the bare walls.[638] What an ignoble fall was that of these pretended religious orders! Notwithstanding their robbery, the Council assigned the monks a residence in the city, and even a chapel, which was more than they deserved. Then every man put his hand to the work. All was life and animation on those beautiful heights whence the eye takes in the lake, the Alps, the Jura, and the valley lying between them. First, the church was pulled down, and then the priory, and nothing was left but rubbish which encumbered the ground. That building, the most ancient in Geneva, was founded at the beginning of the sixth century by Queen Sedeleuba, sister of Queen Clotilda, in memory of the victories of her brother-in-law, Clovis;[639]—that temple where the body of St. Victor had been deposited during the night, and which (as it was said) a light from heaven pointed out to strangers,—that sanctuary to which the great ones of the earth had gone as pilgrims, was now an undistinguishable ruin. That monument, erected to commemorate the triumph of orthodoxy defended by Clovis over Arianism professed by Gondebald, crumbled to the ground, after lasting more than a thousand years, in the midst of the libertinism of its monks. A crown had been placed on the cradle of St. Victor—a rod should have been placed upon its ruins. [Sidenote: Lamentations Of The Dead.]