A Little Swiss Sojourn | Page 5

the wet shrubbery, as resolutely cheerful and as

young-manless as if they had been in some mountain resort of our own.
In the other direction there were simple villas dropped along the little
levels and ledges, and vineyards that crept to the road's edge
everywhere. There was also a cement factory, busy and prosperous; and
to make us quite at home, a saw-mill. Above all, there was the Castle of
Chillon; and one of the first Sundays after our arrival we descended the
stone staircased steps of our gardened terrace, dripping with ivy and
myrtle, and picked our steps over the muddy road to the old
prison-fortress, where, in the ancient chapel of the Dukes of Savoy, we
heard an excellent sermon from the pasteur of our parish. The castle
was perhaps a bow-shot from our pension: I did not test the distance,
having left my trusty cross-bow and cloth-yard shafts in Boston; but
that is my confirmed guess. In point of time it is much more remote, for,
as the reader need not be reminded, it was there, or some castle like it,
almost from the beginning, or at least from the day when men first
began to fight for the possession of the land. The lake-dwellers are
imagined to have had some sort of stronghold there; and it is
reasonably supposed that Romans, Franks, and Burgundians had each
fortified the rock. Count Wala, cousin of Charlemagne, and grandson of
Charles Martel, was a prisoner in its dungeon in 830 for uttering some
words too true for an age unaccustomed to the perpetual veracity of our
newspapers. Count Wala, who was also an abbot, had the misfortune to
speak of Judith of Bavaria as "the adulterous woman," and when her
husband, Louis le Debonair, came back to the throne after the
conspiracy of his sons, the lady naturally wanted Wala killed; but Louis
compromised by throwing him into the rock of Chillon. This is what
Wala's friends say: others say that he was one of the conspirators
against Louis. At any rate, he was the first great captive of Chillon,
which was a political prison as long as political prisoners were needed
in Switzerland. That is now a good while ago.
[Illustration: The Castle of Chillon]
Chillon fell to the princes of the house of Savoy in 1033, and Count
Peter, whom they nicknamed Little Charlemagne for his prowess and
his conquests, built the present castle, after which the barons of the
Pays de Vaud and the Duke of Cophingen (whoever he may have been)

besieged Peter in it. Perhaps they might have taken him. But the wine
was so good, and the pretty girls of the country were so fond of dancing!
They forgot themselves in these delights. All at once Little
Charlemagne was upon them. He leaves his force at Chillon, and goes
by night to spy out the enemy at Villeneuve, returning at dawn to his
people. He came back very gayly; when they saw him so joyous, "What
news?" they asked. "Fine and good," he answers; "for, by God's help, if
you will behave yourselves well, the enemy is ours." To which they
cried with one voice, "Seigneur, you have but to command." They fell
upon the barons and the duke, and killed a gratifying number of their
followers, carrying the rest back to Chillon, where Peter "used them not
as prisoners, but feasted them honorably. Much was the spoil and great
the booty."
Afterwards Peter lost the castle, and in retaking it he launched fifty
thousand shafts and arrows against it. "The castle was not then an
isolated point of rock as we now see it, but formed part of a group of
defences."
VIII
Two or three centuries later--how quickly all those stupid, cruel, weary
years pass under the pen!--the spirit of liberty and protestantism began
to stir in the heads and hearts of the burghers of Berne and of Geneva.
A Savoyard, Francis de Bonivard, prior of St. Victor, sympathized with
them. He was noble, accomplished, high-placed, but he loved freedom
of thought and act. Yet when a deputation of reformers came to him for
advice, he said: "It is to be wished, without doubt, that the evil should
be cast out of our midst, provided that the good enters. You burn to
reform our Church; certainly it needs it; but how can you reform it,
deformed as you are? You complain that the monks and priests are
buffoons; and you are buffoons; that they are gamblers and drunkards,
and you are the same. Does the hate you bear them come from
difference or likeness? You intend to overthrow our clergy and replace
them by evangelical ministers. That would be a very good thing in
itself, but a very bad thing for you, because