istorian of the Genevan church, describing
the scene, "courses through the city with the speed of lightning: the
shops are closed, and the citizens assemble on the public squares. They
know, by past experience, the burdens and sacrifices that await men of
good-will. Within doors, the women get in readiness an abundance of
clothing, of medicines, and of food. The magistrates send wagons and
litters to the villages of the district of Gex; and the peasants with
their pastors take their station upon the border, to obtain intelligence
and to render assistance to the first that may arrive. They have not long
to wait. On the first of September a few travellers make their
appearance, pale, worn out with fatigue, scarcely answering the greeting
they receive. They cannot credit the reality of their deliverance. For
days death has been lying in wait for them at the threshold of every
village. Soon their numbers increase. The wounded uncover the wounds they
have carefully concealed, that they might not be taken for reformers. They
declare that, since the twenty-sixth of August, the country and the cities
have been deluged with the blood of their brethren."[1212]

Nobly did the citizens of the little commonwealth welcome the scarred and
bleeding confessors of their faith, contending with magnanimous rivalry
for the most cruelly mangled, and carrying them in triumph into their
homes and to their frugal boards. Not one refugee was suffered to find his
way to the city hall; and there was no need of any public distribution of
alms.[1213] Within a few days twenty-three hundred families of French
Protestants were gathered in the hospitable inclosure of Geneva. Besides
those that subsequently returned to France, on the arrival of more
propitious times, more than two hundred of these families yet remain,
comprising the most honorable citizens of the republic.[1214]

A solemn fast was instituted. In the presence of the remarkable assembly
gathered in the old cathedral of Saint Pierre, no word of threatening, no
prayer for vengeance was uttered. But a firm conviction of the power and
goodness of God seemed to dwell in every heart, and was uttered in
impressive words by Theodore Beza--since Calvin's death, eight years
before, the leading theologian of Geneva. "The hand of the Lord is not
shortened," said the reformer. "He will not suffer a hair of our head to
fall to the ground without His will. Let us not, therefore, be at all
affrighted beca