Very different thoughts occupied the dwellers in the castle during the night which followed these deliberations. While the Bernese were reflecting on the means of preventing a battle, the governor examined his plans: he had three to four thousand soldiers, fresh, vigorous, and ready for the combat, while the Swiss were only four or five hundred tired and starving men. Not to take advantage of such an opportunity of punishing those 'heretics and mischief-makers,' appeared to him a serious fault. Without breaking his promise, it was possible (if he procrastinated) that the Swiss would have time to come down from the mountains and be cut to pieces by the Savoyards. On Sunday morning Diesbach and Nägueli were stirring at daybreak, but Lullin made them wait a long time for him. When he appeared, the Bernese told him they were ready to start, according to their agreement. 'Excuse me, gentlemen,' said the governor, 'I must hear mass first: we catholics never begin a journey without it.'[655] The mass was very tedious; at length the Bernese, seeing the governor return, thought their long trial was ended; but Lullin, convinced as ever that by giving time to his troops they would destroy Wildermuth's band, said to them: 'Gentlemen, they are about to serve up a collation: it is impossible to start without breakfasting.'[656] The collation had to be waited for: Lullin and his officers talked much and with extreme amiability. 'Really, the governor and his gentlemen are keeping us a little too long this morning,' said the ambassadors,[657] who were quite wearied with these delays. At length they sat down to table, and would no doubt have sat there long, but that suddenly a noise like discharges of musketry was heard. The Bernese ambassadors sprang to their feet. There was no more room for doubt: the battle had begun, and it was perhaps too late to fulfil their commission. They determined, notwithstanding, to ride to the field of battle. The Savoyard governor, thinking that, in consequence of all his delays, his men-at-arms would have had time to cut the Swiss to pieces, raised no more difficulties. They went down into the courtyard of the castle, where for several hours thirty horses had been stamping impatiently, and a great number of officers, guards, and servants had been gossiping. 'Bring me the Genevan's fine Spanish horse,' said the governor, 'and give him a donkey.'[658] They brought Savoye's noble courser to the Sire de Lullin. 'Give me also his arquebuse,' added the sharp-witted Savoyard, 'for I am sure it is a good one.' The troop fell in: the thirty horsemen and the governor's guards surrounded the Sire de Lullin, his officers, the Bernese, and poor Savoye mounted on his humble quadruped. They could not go very fast in consideration of the heretical donkey, which Lullin would not leave behind. Claude did not allow himself to be vexed by the ridicule with which the governor tried to cover him, and sooner than stay at Coppet he