ey are so rare in the peaceable Canton of Vaud that
the "violon" is always empty and the concierge uses it as a receptacle
to store his wood for winter. Therefore the arrival of all these
prisoners had put him out of temper, especially at the thought that he
could no longer take visitors to see the famous dungeon, which at this
season of the year is the chief profit of the place.

Furious, he showed the way to Tartarin, who followed him without the
courage to make the slightest resistance. A few crumbling steps, a damp
corridor smelling like a cellar, a door thick as a wall with enormous
hinges, and there they were, in a vast subterranean vault, with earthen
floor and heavy Roman pillars in which were still the iron rings to
which prisoners of state had been chained. A dim light fell, tremulous
with the shimmer of the lake, through narrow slits in the wall, which
scarcely showed more than a scrap of the sky.

"Here you are at home," said the jailer. "Be careful you don't go to the
farther end: the pit is there..."

Tartarin recoiled, horrified:--

"The pit! _Boudiou!_"

"What do you expect, my lad? I am ordered to put you in Bonnivard's
dungeon... I have put you in Bonnivard's dungeon... Now, if you have
the means, you can be furnished with certain comforts, for instance, a
mattress and coverlet for the night."

"Something to eat, in the first place," said Tartarin, from whom, very
luckily, they had not taken his purse.

The concierge returned with a fresh roll, beer, and a sausage, greedily
devoured by the new prisoner of Chillon, fasting since the night before
and hollow with fatigue and emotion. While he ate on his stone bench
in the gleam of his vent-hole window, the jailer examined him with a
good-natured eye.

"Faith," said he, "I don't know what you have done, nor why they should
treat you so severely..."

"Nor I either, _coquin de sort!_ I know nothing about it," said
Tartarin, with his mouth full.

"Well, it is very certain that you don't look like a bad man, and,
surely, you would n't hinder a poor father of a family from earning
his living, would you?.. Now, see here!.. I have got, up above there, a
whole party of people who have come to see Bonnivard's dungeon... If you
would promise me to keep quiet, and not try to run away..."

The worthy Tartarin bound himself by an oath; and five minutes later he
beheld his dungeon invaded by his old acquaintances on the Rigi-Kulm
and the Tellsplatte, that