POLITICS AND HOME LIFE (1781-92) 337 



nephew to capitulate, and the Venerable Company of Pastors, who 

 sent their Moderator to do his best. The Syndics used what 

 influence they had with the bourgeois Committee at the Hotel de 

 Ville to induce them to put off the threatened recourse to violent 

 measures. But the defence showed no signs of yielding. On the 

 contrary, according to family tradition, the few servants in the 

 house were ordered to tramp up and down the stairs and show 

 themselves armed at different windows, while the master shouted 

 martial orders in a loud voice. On their side the bourgeois 

 Committee ordered six companies of grenadiers to advance with 

 their muskets primed. Bombs, and even mines and saps, were 

 also threatened, but still no action followed. There was at all 

 times some prudence, if not timidity, among Genevese revolu- 

 tionaries, who were more fond of posing as Romans and talking of 

 imitating the example of Saguntum than of facing fire-arms. 

 Moreover, they might well reflect, even if they did not receive 

 specific warning, that any attack on a citizen of the European 

 reputation of de Saussure was not an adventure likely to be with- 

 out serious consequences. There were 12,000 French and Swiss 

 and Sardinian troops outside the walls, and any crime was likely 

 to meet with speedy punishment. Terms were offered ; the 

 besiegers undertook, if allowed to search the house, to leave the 

 inhabitants unmolested and to give any strangers found a safe 

 conduct out of the city. Still the little garrison held out against 

 both menaces and entreaties. They threatened to fire on anyone 

 who approached the walls, they were deaf to the appeals of 

 neighbours who feared their own houses might suffer, and of the 

 twelve members of their own party who were hostages in the 

 hands of the revolutionaries. Duroveray, the Procureur General, 

 one of the leaders of the Representants, did his best to calm the 

 mob, who with axes and planks in their hands clamoured for an 

 assault. Fresh parleyings began with the Committee at the Town 

 Hall. Through a hot June afternoon the crowd waited im- 

 patiently, not, however, without occasional incidents that helped 

 to pass the hours. They are thus related for us by the eye-witness 

 who lived opposite. Her simple story, written at the moment, 

 brings the scene vividly before us in all its serio-comic aspects : 



' The third floor [of the Maison de Saussure], as you know, is occupied 

 by a widow, Madame Rilliet, the mother of M. Rilliet-Fatio, one of 



Y 



