ees and presented the
archiepiscopal mandate, gasping out, "My lord, _inhibitur vobis, prout
in copia_." Bonivard retreated into his inviolable sanctuary of St.
Victor. "I was young enough and crazy enough," he says, "to fear neither
bishop nor duke." He had saved poor Pecolat's life, although the work
was not finished until the publication of an interdict from the
metropolitan silencing every church-bell and extinguishing every
altar-candle in the city had brought the bishop to terms.[7]

It is a hardship to the writer to be compelled to retrench the story of
the early deeds for liberty of Bonivard and his boon companions. There
is a rollicking swagger about them all, which by and by begins to be
sobered when it is seen that on the side of the oppressor there is
_power_. By violence, by fraudulent promises, by foul treachery on the
part of cowardly citizens, the duke of Savoy gains admittance with his
army within the walls of Geneva, and begins his delicious and bloody
revenge for the indignities that have been put upon his pretensions and
usurpations. Berthelier, a very copy from the antique--a hero that might
have stepped forth into the sixteenth century from the page of
Plutarch[8]--remained in the town serenely to await the death which he
foreknew. On the day of the duke's entrance Bonivard, who had no such
relish for martyrdom for its own sake, put himself between two of his
most trusted friends, the lord of Voruz and the abbot of Montheron of
the Pays de Vaud, and galloped away disguised as a monk. "Come first to
my convent," said the abbot, "and thence we will take you to a place of
safety." The convent was reached, and in the morning Bonivard was
greeted by his comrade Voruz, who came into his room, and, laying paper
and pen before him, required him to write a renunciation of his priory
in favor of the abbot of Montheron. Resistance was vain. He was a
prisoner in the hands of traitors. The alternative being "Your priory or
your life!" he frankly owns that he required no time at all to make up
his choice. Voruz took the precious document, with the signature still
wet, and went out, double locking the door behind him. His two friends
turned him over to the custody of the duke, who locked him up for two
years at Grolee, one of his castles down the Rhone, and put the honest
abbot of Montheron in possession of the rich living of St. Victor.

But Bonivard in his prison was less to be pitied than the citizens of
Gene