CHAPTER X.
FRESH TORTURES, PÉCOLAT’S DESPAIR AND STRIKING DELIVERANCE.
Pécolat’s condemnation became the chief business of the court of Turin in its relations with Geneva. Archbishop Seyssel, who at that time possessed great influence, was not for despotism: he approved of moderating the royal authority, but hated republics, and wished to take advantage of Pécolat’s trial to crush the spirit of liberty, which was displaying so much energy in Geneva, and which might spread farther. Feeling the importance of this case, in combating the Huguenot influence, the archbishop determined to withdraw, if possible, the Genevan from his natural judges, and resorted to a trick unworthy so great a statesman. He represented that high treason, the crime of which Pécolat was accused, was not one of those comprehended under the constitutions of the city, and that the cognisance belonged therefore to the prince; but he could not succeed. ‘We have the power,’ answered the syndics, ‘to take cognisance of every criminal case.’ All that Seyssel could obtain was that the bishop should appoint delegates who would sit in court and give their opinion, but not vote.[127]
The judges met in the Château de l’Ile on the 10th of December, 1517; they were surrounded by the duke’s and the bishop’s attorneys, the governor of Vaud, and other partisans of Savoy. Among the six councillors who were to sit with the syndics (the judges being thus ten in number), were some decided ducal partisans, upon whom the bishop could rely for a sentence of condemnation. Poor Pécolat, still suffering, was brought in by the vidame. The sight of the syndics—of the elder Lévrier, Richardet, and Porral—revived his courage: he knew that they were just men and enemies of episcopal despotism. ‘The confessions I made at Thiez,’ he said, ‘were wrung from me by torture: the judge dictated the words and I repeated them after him. I knew that if I did not say what they wanted, they would break my arms, and maim me for ever.’[128]
After this declaration, the examination began: the clearness of Pécolat’s answers, his gentleness and candour, showed all present that they had before them an innocent man, whom powerful princes desired to destroy. The syndics having declared that they were bound to acquit him, the bishop said: ‘Give him the question, and you will see clearly that he is guilty.’ The syndics refused, whereupon the two princes accused them of being partial and suspected men. The episcopal council, therefore, decided, that the city and the bishop should each appoint four judges—an illegal measure, to which the syndics submitted.
The new examination ought to have taken place on the 20th of January, 1518; but Pécolat, suffering from the torture past and terrified by the torture to come, had fallen seriously ill, and it was necessary to send the doctor to him. This man consented to his being carried before the court. The four episcopal judges immediately called for the question, but the syndics opposed it, and the episcopal delegates began to study this living corpse. After examining him attentively they said: ‘He still affords some hold for the torture; he may be examined with a few torments’ (such is the expression in the report). Nergaz siding with the Savoyard doctors, the torture was decided upon. Poor Pécolat began to tremble from head to foot; he knew that he should denounce all his friends, and cursed his own weakness. They tied his hands behind his back, they showed him the rack, and interrogated him.... ‘However, they did not torture him,’ continues the report, ‘considering the weakness of his body and his long imprisonment.’ They thought that the fear of the rack would suffice to make him speak; they were deceived; the sick—we might almost call him the dying man, though tied up and bound, having the instrument of torture before him, answered with simplicity and frankness. Even the bishop’s judges were struck with his candour, and two of them, ‘having the fear of God before their eyes,’ says Bonivard, rather than the fear of men, declared roundly: ‘They have done this poor man wrong. Non invenimus in eo causam. We find no fault in him.’[129]
This honourable declaration embarrassed the duke all the more that he had other anxieties on his mind. The news from Piedmont was bad: every day he received letters urging him to return. ‘The Marquis of Montferrat.’ they told him, ‘is committing serious depredations.’ But the headstrong prince was ready to lose his own states, if he could but get Geneva—and lose them he did not long after. Finding himself on the point of discovering a conspiracy, calculated to satisfy the cardinals, he resolved not to yield. His creatures and those of the prelate held conference after conference; at last they found a means—a diabolical means—of putting Pécolat to death. Seeing that lay judges were not to be persuaded to condemn an innocent man, they resolved that he should be tried by priests. To put this plan into execution, it was necessary to change the layman—the ex-hosier, the merry fellow who was at every banquet and every masquerade—into a churchman. They succeeded. ‘To gratify their appetite,’ said Bonivard, ‘they produced a forged letter, to the effect that Pécolat was an ordained clerk ... and therefore his case belonged not to the secular, but to the ecclesiastical judge.’ The fraud found, or seemed to find belief in the official world. ‘Accordingly,’ goes on the chronicle, ‘they transferred him from the Château de l’Ile, which was the lay prison, to the bishop’s palace which was the Church court, and he was placed once more in the hands of the Pharisees.’ This was a stroke worthy of a celebrated religious order not yet in existence, but which was about to be founded to combat the Reformation. Henceforth we shall see none of that silly consideration, of that delicate circumspection, which the laymen had employed. The bishop, now become judge and party, ‘deliberated how to handle him well.’ Some persons having asserted that Pécolat could not endure the rack, the doctors again examined his poor body: some said yes and others no, so the judges decided that the first were right, and the instrument of torture was prepared. It was not only heroic men like the Bertheliers and Lévriers, who, by their daring opposition to arbitrary power, were then raising the edifice of liberty; but it was also these wicked judges, these tyrannical princes, these cruel executioners, who by their wheel and rack were preparing the new and more equitable times of modern society.[130]
When Pécolat was informed of the fatal decision, his terrors recommenced. The prospect of a new torture, the thought of the accusations he would make against his friends, disturbed his conscience and plunged him into despair.... His features were distorted by it, his beard was in disorder, his eyes were haggard: all in him expressed suffering and terror. His keepers, not understanding this state of his mind, thought that he was possessed by a devil. ‘Berthelier,’ said they, ‘is a great charmer, he has a familiar spirit. He has charmed Pécolat to render him insensible to the torture; try as we may, he will say nothing.’ It was the belief at that time that the charmers lodged certain devils in the patients’ hair. The prisoner’s long rough beard disquieted the bishop’s officers. It was resolved that Pécolat should be shaved in order to expel the demon.[131]
According to rule it should have been an exorcist and not a barber that they should have sent for. Robed in surplice and stole, the priest should have made the sign of the cross over Pécolat, sprinkled him with holy water, and pronounced loud-sounding anathemas against the evil spirit. But no, the bishop was contented to send a barber, which was much more prosaic; it may be that, besides all his other vices, the bastard was a freethinker. The barber came and got his razor ready. The devil whom Pécolat feared, was his own cowardice. ‘I shall inculpate my best friends,’ he said to himself; ‘I shall confess that Berthelier wished to kill the bishop; I shall say all they want me to say.... And then if I die on the rack (which was very possible, considering the exhaustion of his strength) I shall be eternally damned for having lied in the hour of death.’ This idea alarmed him; a tempest agitated his soul; he was already in agony. ‘It is better,’ he thought, ‘to cut off an arm, a foot, or even the tongue, than fall into everlasting perdition.’ At this moment the barber, who had wetted the beard, quitted the room to throw the water out of the basin; Pécolat caught up the razor which the man had left on the table by his side and raised it to his tongue; but moral and physical force both failing him, he made only a gash. He was trying again, when the barber returned, sprang upon him in affright, snatched the razor from his hand, and raised an alarm. The gaoler, his family, and the prince’s surgeon rushed in and found Pécolat ‘coughing and spitting out blood in large quantities.’ They seized him and began to stanch the blood, which it was not difficult to do. His tongue was not cut off, as some have asserted; there was only a deep wound. The officers of the duke and the bishop took extraordinary pains to cure him, ‘not to do him good,’ say the chronicles, ‘but to do him a greater ill another time, and that he might use his tongue in singing whatever they pleased.’ All were greatly astounded at this mystery, of which there was great talk throughout the city.[132] Pécolat’s wound having been dressed, the bastard demanded that he should be put to the rack, but Lévrier, feeling convinced that Pécolat was the innocent victim of an illegal proceeding, opposed it. The bishop still persisted in the necessity of obtaining a confession from him: ‘Confession!’ replied the judge, ‘he cannot speak.’—‘Well then,’ answered, not the executioner but, the bishop, ‘let him write his answer.’ Lévrier, as firm when it was necessary to maintain the respect due to humanity as the obedience due to the law, declared that such cruelty should not be practised before his tribunal. The bishop was forced to give way, but he kept account of this new offence on the part of the contumacious judge.[133]
All Geneva pitied the unhappy man, and asked if there was no one to deliver him from this den of thieves? Bonivard, a man who afterwards knew in his own person the horrors of a prison, never ceased thinking of the means of saving him. He loved Pécolat; he had often admired that simple nature of his, so impulsive, so strong and yet so weak, and above all his devotion to the cause of the liberties of the city. He felt that human and divine rights, the compassion due to the unhappy, his duty towards Geneva, (‘although I am not a native,’ he said,)—all bound him to make an effort. He left his monastery, called upon Aimé Lévrier, and expressed his desire to save Pécolat. Lévrier explained to him that the bishop had forbidden any further steps, and that the judges could not act without his consent. ‘There is however one means,’ added he. ‘Let Pécolat’s relations demand justice of me; I shall refuse, alleging the prince’s good pleasure. Then let them appeal, on the ground of denial of justice,[134] to the metropolitan court of Vienne.’ Bonivard, full of imagination, of invention, of resources, heedless of precedents, and energetic, immediately resolved to try this course. The Archbishop of Vienne (he argued) being always jealous of the Bishop of Geneva, would be delighted to humble his powerful colleague. ‘I have friends, relations, and influence in Savoy,’ said he, ‘I will move heaven and earth, and we will teach the bastard a pretty lesson.’ He returned to his monastery and sent for Pécolat’s two brothers. One of them, Stephen, enjoyed the full confidence of his fellow-citizens, and was afterwards raised to the highest offices; but the tyranny of the princes alarmed everybody: ‘Demand that your brother be brought to trial,’ said Bonivard to the two brothers.—‘No,’ they answered, ‘the risk is too serious.’ ... Bonivard’s eloquence prevailed at last. Not wishing to leave them time for reflection, he took them forthwith to Lévrier; the petition, answer, and legal appeal were duly made; and Stephen Pécolat, who by contact with these two generous souls had become brave, departed for Vienne in Dauphiny with a warm recommendation from the prior. The Church of Vienne had enjoyed from ancient times the title of holy, of maxima sedes Galliarum, and its metropolitan was primate of all Gaul. This prelate, delighted with the opportunity of making his authority felt by a bishop who was then more powerful than himself, summoned the procurator-fiscal, the episcopal council, and the bishop of Geneva to appear before his court of Vienne within a certain term, to hear judgment. In the meanwhile he forbade the bishop to proceed against the prisoner under pain of excommunication. ‘We are in the right road now,’ said Bonivard to Lévrier. But who would serve this daring summons upon the bishop? These writs of Vienne were held in such slight esteem by the powerful prelates of Geneva, that it was usual to cudgel the bearers of them. It might be foreseen that the bishop and duke would try every means to nullify the citation, or induce the archbishop to recall it. In short, this was not an ordinary case. If Pécolat was declared innocent, if his depositions against Berthelier were declared false, what would become of the scheme of Charles III. and Leo X. at which the bishop himself so basely connived? Geneva would remain free.... The difficulties which started up did not dishearten Bonivard; he thought that the devices set on foot to enslave the city were hateful, and that as he wished to live and die there, he ought to defend it. ‘And then,’ adds a chronicler, ‘the commander of St. Victor was more bold than wise.’ Bonivard formed his resolution. ‘Nobody,’ he said, ‘dares bell the cat ... then I will attempt the deed.’ ... But his position did not permit him ‘to pass the river alone.’ It was necessary that the metropolitan citation should be served on the bishop by an episcopal bailiff. He began to search for such a man; and recollecting a certain poor clerk who vegetated in a wretched room in the city, he sent for him, put two crowns in his hand, and said: ‘Here is a letter from the metropolitan that must be delivered to the bishop. The duke and the prelate set out the day after to-morrow for Turin; to-morrow morning they will go and hear mass at St. Pierre; that will be the latest hour. There will be no time after that. Hand this paper to my lord.’ The clerk was afraid, though the two crowns tempted him strongly; Bonivard pressed him: ‘Well,’ said the poor fellow, ‘I will promise to serve the writ, provided you assist me personally.’ Bonivard agreed to do so.
The next day the prior and the clerk entered the cathedral. The princes were present, surrounded with much pomp: it was high mass, a farewell mass; nobody was absent. Bonivard in his quality of canon had a place of honour in the cathedral which would have brought him near the bishop; but he took care not to go there, and kept himself at a distance behind the clerk in order to watch him; he feared lest the poor man should get frightened and escape. The consecration, the elevation, the chanting, all the sumptuous forms of Roman worship, all the great people bending before the altar, acted upon the unlucky bailiff’s imagination. He began to tremble, and when the mass was ended and the moment for action arrived, ‘seeing,’ says Bonivard, ‘that the game was to be played in earnest,’ he lost his courage, stealthily crept backwards, and prepared to run away. But Bonivard, who was watching him, suddenly stepped forward, seized him by the collar, and placing the other hand upon a dagger, which he held beneath his robe, whispered in his ear: ‘If you do not keep your promise, I swear I will kill you.’ The clerk was almost frightened to death, and not without cause, ‘for,’ adds Bonivard in his plain-spoken ‘Chronicles,’ ‘I should have done it, which I do not say to my praise; I know now that I acted foolishly. But youth and affection carried me away.’ He did not kill the clerk, however; he was satisfied with holding him tightly by the thumb, and with a firm hand held him by his side. The poor terrified man wished in vain to fly: Bonivard’s dagger kept him motionless; he was like a marble statue.[135]