Now was Bonnivard foremost in the councils of the exasperated citizens. He was a man of letters, and searched his library for arguments against this arrogant exercise of Papal power; he was a man of action, and appealed to the aforesaid culverins as a dernier ressort. Strange to say, the College of Cardinals became his allies, and the bull was recalled on their remonstrance. But the Duke did not relinquish his designs; and when he was cool after this signal repulse, he began to wonder whether Bonnivard was at all corruptible. Would he not prefer the substantial rewards of a prince to the fickle favour of a populace? An opportunity occurred for trying his public virtue. The judge of the criminal court in Geneva had mortally offended the Duke in the exercise of his legal functions; and the latter wished to arrest him, but dared not for the people. He sent his ambassador to sound Bonnivard, with many compliments on his intelligence and prowess. Although Prior of St. Victor, he was not in holy orders-it was a mere secular work, and rendered him none the less a soldier. The seizing of the obnoxious judge was proposed to him. "Your ancestors were loyal servants of the House of Savoy, and my lord expects you will show yourself worthy of them. You will receive a handsome reward from my lord." Bonnivard.replied that he had laid aside the sword for the breviary; he was unwilling to irritate the envoy by any stronger refusal; but when the latter said he would go himself to take the judge, "I know the people of Geneva," replied the prior, "and warn you that they are not indulgent. I shall set aside thirty florins to have a mass said for your soul tomorrow!" The frightened envoy rode away to his master at first light in the morning, and reported Bonnivard is impracticable.

The judge thus saved became afterwards Bonnivard's ally in a case where the Duke wished to commit a new oppression. The Duke's relative and tool was Bishop of Geneva; and he had captured one of the patriots named Pecalot on some legal pretext, and subjected him to horrible tortures. "Let his relatives come to me," said the judge; "let them demand justice, and I shall refuse, alleging the prince's good pleasure. Then let them appeal on the ground of denial of justice, to the Metropolitan Court of Vienne." The plan succeeded so far as that the Archbishop of Vienne summoned the Bishop of Geneva before him, to give account of the transaction. But how to get this citation served on the enraged bishop was the question. Bonnivard found a wretched bailiff, to whom two crowns was a great bribe, and who promised to serve the writ if Bonnivard accompanied him personally. High mass was the time chosen, and the splendour of the service so overpowered the poor bailiff that he longed to run away. What! brave all the power of that great personage with the gilded mitre, to whom

regiments of priests bowed down. Bonnivard watched the growing cowardice, and had recourse to an extreme measure-he showed him, under his prior's robe, a bright dagger. The trembling bailiff fell on his knees before the terrible bishop, and kissing the parchment, thrust it into the episcopal hand, saying, "My lord, you are inhibited, as in the copy;" and instantly ran off. The citation was followed up by an order from the metropolitan to liberate poor Pecolat, a counter order from the Pope not to dare do so; in the midst of which contradictions the people took the law into their own hands, and set him free with acclamation. "Fearing lest the poor fellow should again be seized," says d'Aubigné, they took him to the convent of the Grey Friars, an asylum reputed inviolable. The cell was never empty; everybody wanted to see the bishop's victim. Bonnivard was one of the first to come. The poor man being tongue-tied (from a desperate wound in the mouth), "told the mystery of his sufferings with his fingers," says Bonnivard. "The citizens round him could not turn their eyes from his thin, pale face. By his gestures and attitudes he described the scenes of his examination, the torture, and the razor." It may be believed that such a scene contained in it the stimulant to a terrible retribution on the tyrants.

Bonnivard thought of a peaceable means of gaining the liberties of his dear adopted city. If he could only get himself named as Bishop of Geneva! The present occupant was in very bad health. "I will go to Rome," said the prior, "and will not have my beard shaved until I am Bishop of Geneva." He thought to accomplish his object by means of a "cardination "—an intrigue of cardinals; and, were he once a bishop, he would secure the rights of the people. Perhaps this was guessed at Rome; at all events, he could get no promises from the sacred College. He was disgusted with the capital of the Church and the demeanour of its head. "Do you wish to know what you must do to obtain a request from the Pope and Cardinals? Tell them that you will kill any man whom they have a grudge against, or that you are ready to serve them in their pleasures. Everything is for sale at the court; red-hats, mitres, judgeships, crosiers, abbeys, canonries Above all, do not trust Leo X.'s word; for he maintains, that since he dispenses others from their oaths, he can surely dispense himself."

The Genevese prior left the Eternal City, considerably enlightened as to the abuses of the Church at head-quarters. When he reached Turin, his friends told him that his arrest was intended; so with just as much delay as amounted to a defiance of his enemies, he came away to Geneva. brought the heads and quartered

After him in a short time were limbs of two of the youthful

patriots who had been members with him of the "Children of Geneva," a political fraternity. The savage Duke had caused these mangled remains to be preserved in brine, and then sent from Turin across the Alps, and transfixed with nails to a spreading walnut-tree on the banks of the Arve close to the city. Bonnivard's fiercest anger was roused by the fate of his friends. He began to see no safety from such tyranny but in a league with the Swiss cantons, for which the poorer citizens clamoured. "But, the great

and rich," says he, "" were afraid on account of their riches, which they preferred to their life." He wrote a chronicle of these times when he bore a part so active; one of the most interesting records extant of the period, proving his scholarship as well as his patriotism.

He proposed a regular organisation for the purpose of conferring with the Swiss deputies as to the league they desired. "Let us revive and make use of the brotherhood of St. George; let us employ it to save the franchises threatened by the Savoyard princes." It was done. Soon the body got the name of Huguenot, while the Duke's party were named Mamelukes. The latter wore a sprig of holly as their badge-the former a cross on their doublet; and many were the contentions between them. No stone was left unturned by the Duke in his endeavour to prevent the alliance with Switzerland: at last he suborned a majority of the chapter of St. Pierre, which represented the Church in Geneva, to vote against it. Bonnivard was present as Prior of St. Victor, and assured the canons and abbots that their conduct was anything but a safe course. The rage of the people was nearer than the rewards of the Duke. "There is one way of satisfying both parties," said he, when he saw the furred and hooded Churchmen uneasy: "reply to my lord of Savoy, and also to the people, that your business does not extend to alliances and other civil matters, but to spiritual things only; that it does not concern you to make and unmake treaties; that your function is only to pray to God, and promote peace among all men." This speech, and its significance, were far in advance of Bonnivard's times.

"Is it thus you show your gratitude ?" exclaimed one of the canons, reminding him of favours conferred by the House of Savoy on his predecessors in the priory.

"I would willingly serve the Duke," replied Bonnivard; "but, before all, I will observe my oath to Geneva and the Church." He rose and departed, the sole protestor in the sacerdotal assembly.

But crowds had gathered outside, in no gentle mood with the Churchmen who were thus rendering themselves tools to a despot. A friend came running to Bonnivard. "Some disaster will happen to the canons if you do not give orders."

The prior lighted a torch,

and ran out to meet the crowd. He quieted them by a promise that they should see a letter from the canons declaring to the Duke their neutrality in the matter of the treaty with Switzerland; and he made the Bishop of Maurienne (one of the chapter) write such a document instantly, which prevented a popular convulsion, and the loss of many lives.

The Duke resolved to have recourse to arms to chastise these insolent shopkeepers, who would not give up their liberties into his keeping. Ten thousand soldiers were ready to march upon Geneva. What was to be done? Bonnivard and the patriots met for consultation. "We will send to Friburg for a garrison," said they for if the city was protected by the Swiss League, Savoy dared not assail it. But the garrison would be so expensive! Bonnivard's imagination supplied him with an apt figure of rhetoric. "You have exasperated the wolf; he is at your gates, ready to devour you; and you prefer to let him eat up your milk, your butter, and your cheese, what am I saying? You would sooner let him eat up yourselves than give a share of your pittance to the mastiff that would guard you." This metaphor decided the council, and an embassy was sent to Friburg.

The determined attitude of the citizens intimidated the Duke; though his ten thousand men were ready seven miles off, he drew back at the last moment. Bonnivard had expected something of the sort. He was prepared for fraud more than for force; he dreaded the Duke's silvery words more than his artillery. The event proved him correct by dint of solemn oaths the Savoy Prince persuaded the citizens to let his army pass through. Bounivard thought prudence the best part of valour on this occasion; he knew that the Duke's party thirsted for his blood: "he had no culverins now in his priory, and he could not have resisted the Savoy army with his ten monks." He disguised himself as a common friar, and escaped towards the Pays de Vaud with two persons whom he thought were friends-a private gentleman and a priest. These traitors had made a bargain with each other as to how they could benefit themselves by delivering up the unsuspecting Bonnivard. They lured him to a certain abbey, and, when they had him safe in a cell, demanded that he should resign his priory to the priest, threatening to give him up to his enemies in case of refusal. After long resistance, he signed the paper they required; and then-they immediately delivered him to the guards of the Duke. He was imprisoned in the castle of Grotée, on the banks of the Rhone, for two years; and, but for powerful friends, his head would probably have been fastened up where those of the young patriots were bleaching

still.

It is rather a satisfaction to know that the priest who thus

nefariously obtained Bonnivard's priory did not enjoy it long. Going to Rome to arrange certain ecclesiastical matters, he was invited by some brother priests to a banquet, "after the Roman manner," says the chronicler, "who gave him some cardinals' powder, which purged the breath out of his body." They coveted his benefices; but a deed was found after his death, by which the repentant man had assigned all his rights over the priory back to Bonnivard, its former possessor. Leo X. disregarded the will, and gave the priory to one of his cousins; and, when Bonnivard was at last set free, he found himself a pauper, from having been a sort of prince. Five years afterwards, when the Genevese had partially shaken off the Savoyard yoke, he was reinstated in the priory as an act of popular reparation. Long before had the heroic Berthelier (he who had persuaded the young prior that the culverins ought to continue culverins, and who had since laid down his life on the scaffold for the cause of freedom) uttered what proved a prophecy-"Know that for the liberty of Geneva you will lose your benefice, and I-I shall lose my head." "He told me that a hundred times," says Bonnivard; and it was to have a further fulfil

ment.

Although he had received the priory back again, it was landless and moneyless. The brilliant Bonnivard had literally nothing to live on, so long as his mortal enemy, the Duke, kept his revenues. The Council of Geneva, compassionating his poverty, allowed him four crowns and a half each month; truly a paltry pension, but as much as they, harrassed with the Savoyard strife, could afford. It was too great a trial for Bonnivard's patience to see the rich lands of his benefice, lying beyond the river, paying rent duly to his oppressor. Sometimes he seized a musquetoon, and procured a few men-at-arms to help him in making a descent upon what was, indeed, his own property; but the Duke easily garrisoned the hamlets against him, and the Pope overwhelmed him with a brief. "There was no one in Geneva whom the Papal party detested more than him;" because he was a fearless political reformer, and had pungent words for ecclesiastical abuses. But the Huguenots were his ardent partisans, and procured him from the Council some protection, in shape of six arquebuses and four pounds of gunpowder, intended for the garrisoning of his house in case of attack. He was a very military sort of prior, without doubt; and gave frequent proofs of his prowess.

Among the Duke's other pieces of injustice was the seizure of Bonnivard's lordship of Cartigny, held under the House of Savoy. "The rights of a prince and his subjects are reciprocal," quoth the prior, reasoning himself into rebellion. "If the subject owes obedience to his prince, the prince owes justice to his subject." And,