ed the office and the benefice, "la dignite
ecclesiastique de Prieur et de la Seigneurie temporelle de St. Victor."
A lover of independence, a child of the later Renaissance, in a word, a
Genevese, he threw in his lot with a band of ardent reformers and
patriots, who were conspiring to shake off the yoke of Duke Charles III.
of Savoy, and convert the city into a republic. Here is his own
testimony: "Des que j'eus commence de lire l'histoire des nations, je me
sentis entraine par un gout prononce pour les Republiques dont j'epousai
toujours les interets." Hence, in a great measure, the unrelenting
enmity of the duke, who not only ousted him from his priory, but caused
him to be shut up for two years at Grolee, Gex, and Belley, and again,
after he had been liberated on a second occasion, ordered him, a safe
conduct notwithstanding, to be seized and confined in the Castle of
Chillon. Here he remained from 1530 to February 1, 1536, when he was
released by the Bernese.

For the first two years he was lodged in a room near the governor's
quarters, and was fairly comfortable; but a day came when the duke paid
a visit to Chillon; and "then," he writes, "the captain thrust me into a
cell lower than the lake, where I lived four years. I know not whether
he did it by the duke's orders or of his own accord; but sure it is that
I had so much leisure for walking, that I wore in the rock which was the
pavement a track or little path, as it had been made with a hammer"
(_Chroniques des Ligues_ de Stumpf, addition de Bonivard).

After he had been liberated, "par la grace de Dieu donnee a Mess^rs^ de
Berne," he returned to Geneva, and was made a member of the Council of
the State, and awarded a house and a pension of two hundred crowns a
year. A long life was before him, which he proceeded to spend in
characteristic fashion, finely and honourably as scholar, author, and
reformer, but with little self-regard or self-respect as a private
citizen. He was married no less than four times, and not one of these
alliances was altogether satisfactory or creditable. Determined "to warm
both hands before the fire of life," he was prone to ignore the
prejudices and even the decencies of his fellow-citizens, now incurring
their displeasure, and now again, as one who had greatly testified for
truth and freedom, being taken back into favour and forgiven. There was
a deal of human nature in Bonivard, with the result that, at times,
conduct fell short o