arvings, he could get
carried to church. And why does he neglect the communion? _Answer_: He
has been debarred from it. "Then present your request to be restored."
So the poor old gentleman presents himself six weeks later, asking to be
readmitted to the Church; which is granted, but with the remark, entered
on the record, that he "does not show much contrition in coming with a
bunch of flowers over his ear--a thing very unbecoming in a man of his
years."

The dreadful consistory had a principal concern in the affair that
darkened the declining days of Bonivard with the shadow of a tragedy. An
escaped nun had found refuge in his lodgings after his third wife's
death; and after some love-making--on which side was disputed--there was
a promise of marriage given by him, which, however, he was in no hurry
to fulfil. The consistory deemed it best to interfere, in the interests
of propriety, and insist on the marriage; and the decrepit old invalid
in vain pleaded his age and bodily infirmities. So he was married in
spite of himself to his nun, and showed his disposition to make the best
of it by making her a wedding-present of his new Latin treatise, just
finished, on _The Origin of Evil_, and receiving in tender return a
Greek copy of the _Philippics_ of Demosthenes. Three years later the
wretched woman was accused of adultery, and being put to the torture
confessed her crime and was drowned in a sack, while her paramour was
beheaded. Bonivard, being questioned, declared his belief of her
innocence, and that her worst faults were that she wanted to make him
too pious, and tormented him to begin preaching, and sometimes beat him
when he had a few friends in to drink.[13]

For five years after this catastrophe the old man lingered, tended by
hirelings, but watched with filial gratitude by the little state whose
liberties he had helped to save, and whose heroic history he had
recorded. He had at least the comfort of having finished that great
work; and when he brought the manuscript of it to the council, they
referred it to a committee with Master Calvin at the head; who reported
that it was written in a rude and familiar style, quite beneath the
dignity of history, and that for this and other reasons it had better
not be printed. The precious manuscript was laid on the shelf until in
the lapse of years it was found that the very reasons why those solemn
critics rejected it were the things that gave it supreme value to a
late