urg, and to have
exceeded him in acts of savage cruelty and vicious living.

One example out of many similar ones will show the spirit in which the
Swiss traditions have treated the memory of Wolfenschiess. On a certain
day, finding that a peasant named Conrad, of Baumgarten, whose wife he
had frequently tried in vain to seduce, was absent from home,
Wolfenschiess entered Conrad's house and ordered his wife to prepare him
a bath, at the same time renewing with ardor his former proposals. With
the cunning of her sex, the wife feigned to be willing to accede to his
wishes, and on the pretence of retiring to another room to undress sped
to her husband, who quickly returned and slew Wolfenschiess while he was
still in the bath. After this exploit an entrance was effected into the
bailies' castle of Rotzberg by one of the conspirators, who was in the
habit of paying nightly visits to a servant living in the castle, by
means of a rope attached to her window, and who then admitted his
companions, who were lying concealed in the moat.

But, probably in consequence of his supposed connection with the legend
of William Tell, the bailie to whom the name of Gessler has been given
stands out more prominently in Swiss history than any other. Gessler's
residence, according to tradition, was a strongly fortified castle built
in the valley of Uri, near Altorf, and this he named Zwing Uri ("Uri's
Restraint"). He used every means that cruelty or avarice could suggest
in his conduct as governor, and incurred additional hatred from the
methods he adopted to discover the members of a secret conspiracy he
believed existed against him in the district. With this object in view,
Gessler caused a pole, surmounted with the ducal cap of Austria, to be
set up in the market-place at Altorf, before which emblem of authority
he ordered every man to uncover and do reverence as he passed. The
refusal of a peasant to obey this command, his arrest, trial, and
condemnation to pierce with an arrow an apple placed on his own child's
head, his dexterity in performing this feat, his escape from his
enemies, his murder of the tyrant Gessler, the solemn compact sworn at
Ruetli, and the revolutionary events that followed form the motive of
the much-celebrated legend of William Tell.

The mythical hero of this shadowy romance has long embodied in his
person the virtues of the typical avenger of the wrongs of the poor and
the oppressed against the tyranny of the r