n which Prior Bonivard
ordains that every new brother at his initiation shall not only stand
treat all round, but shall, at his own cost and charges, furnish every
one of his brethren with a new cap. Another document of equal gravity
makes new ordinances concerning the convent-kitchen, which seems to have
been one of the good prior's most religious cares.[6] Not only his own
subjects, but those of other jurisdictions, were made to feel the
majesty of his sovereign authority. He would let them know that he had
"just as much jurisdiction at St. Victor as the duke of Savoy had at
Chambery." He heard causes, sentenced to prison, even received
ambassadors from his brother the duke, but not without looking sharply
at their credentials. If these were wanting, the unfortunate wretches
were threatened with the gallows as spies, and when they had been
thoroughly frightened the monarch would indulge himself in the exercise
of the sweetest prerogative of royalty, the pardoning power, and, when
it was considered that the majesty of the state had been sufficiently
asserted, would wind up with asking the whole company to dinner.

[Illustration: FRANCOIS BONIVARD, "THE PRISONER OF CHILLON."

[From an old print in the Public Library of Geneva, never before
copied.]]

It had been considered a clever stroke of policy, at a time when the
dukes of Savoy and the bishops of Geneva, who agreed in nothing else,
were plotting, together or separately, to capture and extinguish the
immemorial liberties of the brave little free city, to get this
fortified outpost before its very gate officered by a brilliant and
daring young Savoyard gentleman, who would be bound to the duke by his
nativity and to the Church by his office, and to both by his interests.
To the dismay of bishop and duke, it appeared that the young prior, who
had led a gay life of it at the University of Turin, had nevertheless
read his classics to some purpose, and had come back with his head full
of Plato and Plutarch and Livy and of theories of republican liberty. So
that by putting him into St. Victor they had turned that little
stronghold from an outpost of attack upon Geneva liberties into the
favorite resort and rendezvous of all the young liberal leaders of that
gay but gallant little republic, who found themselves irresistibly drawn
to young Bonivard, partly as a republican and still more as a jolly good
fellow.

The first manifestation of his sympathies in that direction