Yet things that have been great in the eyes of men do not always end like those that have been vulgar. One day a strange report, set afloat by the monks and nuns, circulated through the city. During the night, voices, groans, and lamentations had been heard among the ruins of St. Victor. The wind, when it blows strong over those heights, often resembles the human voice. The devotees listened: again the plaintive tones were heard, and agitated them. ‘Ah!’ they exclaimed, ‘it is the dead groaning, and not without reason, because their repose has been disturbed.’ The crowd increased, and ere long ‘the ghosts were plainly lamenting, not only by night, but by day.’ If the dead lamented over the fall of St. Victor, the living had reason to weep still more over the church, whose monks had been its disgrace instead of its glory. After the priory, the houses nearest to the city were pulled down one by one. When the citizens, wearied by their labors, sat down on the ruins to rest, they asked what was to become of them. ‘Where shall I store my goods, where shelter my wife and children?’ said Jean Montagnier. ‘And where shall I go myself?’ A poor mason, an infirm old man, burst into tears when he saw his wretched home demolished: the Council gave him a measure of wheat, and promised to pay his rent. But if the magistrates showed kindness to the wretched, they were inflexible to the rebels. Magdalen Picot, a widow, having insulted the syndics in a fit of passion, was sentenced to three days’ imprisonment. If the poor lamented their hovels, the rich regretted their beautiful houses, the pleasant gardens round them, the smiling meadows watered by running streams and overshadowed by majestic trees, the fountains and the temple of the Crusaders, whose Gothic walls imparted an antique and religious character to the pleasing picture. A poet gave utterance to their thoughts in these lines:— Urbe fuere mihi majora suburbia quondam, Templis et domibus nec speciosa minus, Quinetiam irriguis pratis, hortis et amœnis; Pascebant oculos hæc animosque magis.[640] Amid such lamentations, all good citizens and zealous evangelicals remained firm; but De Muro with a great number of catholics quitted Geneva, and passed over to the enemy’s camp. Henceforward they were to fight no longer against the Reformation with secret conspiracies; they would attack it in open war: _aperto bello patriam oppugnaturi_.[641] [Sidenote: The Affrighted Nuns.]