made peace, one of the conditions being
that Bonnivard should not go about any
more trying to collect his rents in the
duke's country. That the poor prior might
not altogether starve, the city allowed him
a very small pension: " I was obliged to
put up with it," he says, " seeing they
couldn't do any better for me." But he
could not live doing nothing in Geneva,
so he got a safe-conduct from the duke,
and went to see his mother at Seyssel.
His enemies, some of whom would have
been glad of the reversion of the priory,
valueless as it now seemed, immediately
accused him of meaning to sell their secrets
to the duke. So there was poor Bonnivard,
not daring to stay at Seyssel, where
his family had been too frightened to feel
much pleasure at seeing him, and afraid to
go back to Geneva, lest the syndic should
arrest him as a traitor. He got his safe-conduct
prolonged; wandered about the
Pays de Vaud; and tried to sell his benefice
to the Bishop of Lausanne for a
small yearly pension. But one day, " when
I was riding my mule towards Lausanne,"
he writes, " with a strong country fellow
for a guide, the castellan of Chillon, with
fifteen men, rushed out of a little wood by
the wayside. ' Spur on, spur on!' I cried to
my man; but instead of spurring he turned
his horse right round, and jumped upon
me, cutting through my sword-belt with a
knife that he had ready. Before I could
recover the surprise, the duke's people
were upon me; and though I showed them
my safe-conduct, they tied me hands and
feet and carried me to Chillon Castle, where
I was kept six years, till, by the blessing
of God, and the intercession of the councils
of Berne and Geneva, I was set at liberty."

For two years out of the six, the Prisoner
of Chillon had not much to complain of.
Beaufort, the castellan, gave him a
comfortable room, and took up his quarters
with him. He was a jolly fellow, like his
prisoner; and the two played cards, told
stories, and killed time together as best
they could. But, by-and-bye the duke
visited Chillon, and things were changed.
By his orders Bonnivard was put into a
dungeon (un escroctes, he calls it in his
patois-French) partly below the level of
the lake, " and there I had so much leisure
to walk up and down, that I made a track
along the rocky pavement as plain as if I
had knocked it out with a hammer." All
he says of his occupation here is that he
used to amuse himself by making French
and Latin ballads and short poems.
Altogether he does not seem to have suffered
much, and the pathetic features of Byron's
poem—the brothers dying before his eyes,
the weariness which was worse than death,
&c.—are all, in fact, pure romance. Bonnivard
had no brothers at all, that we know
of; and he kept himself merry by political
speculations, among others by making lampoons,
and consoled himself by looking forward
to a real aristocracy, a true government
of the best, among whom he of course
would take high rank.

With his imprisonment, Bonnivard's
public life may be said to end; he was set
free in 1536, when Chillon was taken, and
was brought back to Geneva in triumph.
But his share in the triumph did not last
long. Geneva had changed during these
six years. It was now the Geneva of Calvin,
a very different place from the merry
profligate city where the prior of St. Victor
had spent such a rattling life.

Everybody now lived by the severest rules.
Nobody was allowed to sing or play
anything but psalm tunes, even at weddings;
nobody might wear jewels, or lace, or
knickerbockers, or long-flowing hair;
nobody might eat of more than two dishes at
dinner, or play even a game of tric-trac.
That is what one man (he whom his school-fellows
used to call the " accusative case")
had, by the sole force of his will, brought
the gay city of Geneva to. He had everybody
against him, the patriots—the party
of Berthelier and Hugues—most of all;
he was a foreigner, and the Genevese
had always been shy of submitting to
foreign influence; he was never made a
magistrate; he did not even get the freedom
of the city till quite the end of his
career; he went dead against the
traditional habits and feelings of the place;
yet somehow he carried the whole city
with him; for Geneva wanted to be an
independent state, and people felt that,
situated as they were, they could only keep
free by marking themselves off by a strong
barrier from all around them. Calvinism
did for Geneva what the law of Moses did
for the Jews; it kept them " a peculiar
people."

Life had become gloomy; visitors who
put up at the inns were not allowed to go
out after supper; their dinner-hour (as well
as that of all the town) was fixed by law,
and "mine host" had to say grace so as to
ensure their not sitting down to an
unblessed meal. " Mine host" had, moreover,
to watch what visitors did, and to make
his report to the authorities.