A Little Swiss Sojourn | Page 6

put them down. Meanwhile, if you trust me, do one of two things: if you wish to remain deformed, as you are, do not wonder that others are like you; or, if you wish to reform them, begin by showing them how."
[Illustration: A Railroad Servant]
This was very odd language to use to a deputation of reformers, but I confess that it endears the memory of Bonivard to me. He was a thoroughly charming person, and not at all wise in his actions. Through mere folly he fell twice into the hands of his enemies, suffered two years' imprisonment, and lost his priory. To get it back he laid siege to it with six men and a captain. The siege was a failure. He trusted his enemy, the duke, and was thrown into Chillon, where he remained a sort of guest of the governor for two years. The duke visited the castle at the end of that time. "Then the captain threw me into a vault lower than the lake, where I remained four years. I do not know whether it was by order of the duke or from his own motion, but I do know that I then had so much leisure for walking that I wore in the rock which formed the floor of the dungeon a pathlet [vionnet], or little path, as if one had beaten it out with a hammer." He was fastened by a chain four feet in length to one of the beautiful Gothic pillars of the vault, and you still see where this gentle scholar, this sweet humorist, this wise and lenient philosopher, paced to and fro those weary years like a restless beast--a captive wolf, or a bear in his pit. But his soul was never in prison. As he trod that vionnet out of the stone he meditated upon his reading, his travels, the state of the Church and its reform, politics, the origin of evil. "His reflections often lifted him above men and their imperfect works; often, too, they were marked by that scepticism which knowledge of the human heart inspires. 'When one considers things well,' he said, 'one finds that it is easier to destroy the evil than to construct the good. This world being fashioned like an ass's back, the fardel that you would balance in the middle will not stay there, but hangs over on the other side.'"
Bonivard was set free by the united forces of Berne and Geneva, preaching political and religious liberty by the cannon's mouth, as has had so often to happen. That too must have seemed droll to Bonivard when he came to think it over in his humorous way. "The epoch of the Renaissance and the Reformation was that of strong individualities and undaunted characters. But let no one imagine a resemblance between the prior of St. Victor and the great rebels his contemporaries, Luther, Zwinglius, and Calvin. Like them he was one of the learned men of his time; like them he learned to read the Evangels, and saw their light disengage itself from the trembling gleams of tradition; but beyond that he has nothing in common with them. Bonivard is not a hero; he is not made to obey or to command; he is an artist, a kind of poet, who treats high matters of theology in a humorous spirit; prompt of repartee, gifted with happy dash; his irony has lively point, and he likes to season the counsels of wisdom with sauce piquante and rustic bonhomie.... He prepares the way for Calvin, while having nothing of the Calvinist; he is gay, he is jovial; he has, even when he censures, I know not what air of gentleness that wins your heart."
[Illustration: A Bit of Villeneuve]
IX
This and all the rest that I know of Bonivard I learn from a charming historical and topographical study of Montreux and its neighborhood, by MM. Rambert, Lebert, etc.; and I confess it at once, for fear some one else shall find me out by simply buying the book there. It leaves you little ground for classifying 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