Bonivard with the great reformers, but it
leaves you still less for identifying him historically with Byron's
great melodramatic Prisoner of Chillon. If the Majority have somewhere
that personal consciousness without which they are the Nonentity, one
can fancy the liberal scholar, the humorous philosopher, meeting the
romantic poet, and protesting against the second earthly captivity that
he has delivered him over to. Nothing could be more alien to Bonivard
than the character of Byron's prisoner; and all that equipment of six
supposititious brothers, who perish one by one to intensify his
sufferings, is, it must be confessed, odious and ridiculous when you
think of the lonely yet cheerful sceptic pacing his _vionnet_, and
composing essays and verses as he walked. Prisoner for prisoner, even if
both were real, the un-Byronic Bonivard is much more to my mind. But the
poet had to make a Byronic Bonivard, being of the romantic time he was,
and we cannot blame him. The love of his sentimentality pervades the
region; they have named the nearest hotel after him, and there is a
_Sentier Byron_ leading up to it. But, on the other hand, they have
called one of the lake steamboats after Bonivard, which, upon the whole,
I should think would be more satisfactory to him than the poem. At any
rate, I should prefer it in his place.

X

The fine Gothic chapel where we heard our pasteur preach was whitewashed
out of all memory of any mural decoration that its earlier religion may
have given it; but the gloss of the whitewash was subdued by the dim
light that stole in through the long slits of windows. We sat upon
narrow wooden seats so very hard that I hope the old dukes and their
court were protected by good stout armor against their obduracy, and
that they had not to wait a quarter of an hour for the holy father to
come walking up the railroad track, as we had for our pasteur. There
were but three men in the congregation that day, and all the rest were
Suissesses, with the hard, pure, plain faces their sex wear mostly in
that country. The choir sat in two rows of quaintly carved seats on each
side of the pulpit, and the school-master of the village led the
singing, tapping his foot to keep time. The pastor, delicate and wan of
face, and now no longer living, I came afterwards to know better, and to
respect greatly for his goodness and good sense. His health had been
broken by the hard work of a mountain parish, and he had vainly sp