Frightened Nuns.
While the mamelukes were indulging in highway robbery without the city, the weaker members of the episcopal party who still remained within it were living in fear. Their persons, their worship, their convents were respected: not a hair of their heads was touched; but they trembled lest the outrages of the refugees at Peney should excite the huguenots to take their revenge. The nuns especially were in perpetual alarm. One night, between eleven and twelve o’clock, the sisters of St. Claire were startled from their slumbers by a loud knocking at the door: scared at the noise, they listened with beating hearts. Then other knocks were heard. Faint and trembling, they crept from their beds. The huguenots are surely coming to avenge on them the perfidious night of the 31st of July! ‘The heretics,’ they whispered one to another, ‘have broken down the gates of the convent.’ The nuns ascribing guilty intentions to them, ran to the abbess in dismay: ‘My dear children,’ said she, ‘fight valiantly for the love of God.’ They waited, but nobody came.
The youngest of the nuns, who had been at service overnight with the rest of the community, and made drowsy by the long prayers, had fallen into a sound sleep; the under-superior had locked her in the church without observing her. About eleven o’clock the unlucky sister awoke: she looked round, and could not make out where she was.... At last she recognized the chapel; but the darkness, the loneliness, the place itself—all combined to frighten her. She fancied she could see the dead taking advantage of that silent hour to quit their graves and wander through the church.... Her limbs refused to move. At length she summoned up courage and rushed to the door. It was locked. In her fright, she gave it a violent blow. It was this which woke the sisters. Then she listened, and as no one came, she knocked again three times, as loud as she could.
While this was going on, the abbess prepared to receive the wolves who were about to devour her innocent lambs. She first desired to know if all her flock were present, and to her great anguish discovered that one was missing. Then another knock, louder than all the rest, was heard. ‘Let us go forth,’ said the abbess, ‘and enter the church, for it will be better for us to be before God than in the dormitory.’ They descended the stairs; the abbess put the key into the lock, opened the door ... and found before her the young nun, who, pale as death fainted away at her feet.[[615]]
The tales that men took pleasure in circulating, and sometimes even printing, about the reformers and the reformed, about Calvin and Luther in particular, often had no more reality than the imaginations of the nuns of St. Claire as to the designs of the huguenots, which had given the poor girls such a terrible fright; and they were less innocent.
CHAPTER XIV.
AN HEROIC RESOLUTION AND A HAPPY DELIVERANCE.
(August and September, 1534.)
The friends of independence and of the Reformation had better grounded anxieties than those of the nuns of St. Claire: they understood that the attack had only been adjourned, and that they must hold themselves ready for severe struggles. Accordingly, Geneva mustered all her forces. ‘Let those who are abroad return home,’ said the Council: but alas! two of the most intrepid were in the prisons of the French primate, and about to be sent to the stake. The sentence condemning Baudichon de la Maisonneuve and his friend to death had been pronounced, as we have seen. They had been delivered by the priests to the secular arm, and were about to be executed, when a fresh attempt was made in their behalf.
Tales About Parel.
There was a patrician family in Berne, illustrious for its ancient nobility and valor, some of whose members had rendered signal services to France. In the 15th century, Nicholas of Diesbach, the avoyer, allied that puissant republic with Louis XI. against Charles the Bold, and had gained several victories over the Burgundian forces. At Pavia, in 1525, another of the family, John of Diesbach, commanded the Swiss auxiliary troops of France. Stationed on the right wing, at the head of 2,000 Helvetians, at first he drove back the imperialist infantry and cavalry. Francis I. was on the point of gaining the victory; but meanwhile his left wing had been annihilated; in that quarter Suffolk, the heir of the White Rose, the Duke of Lorraine’s brother, Nassau, Schomberg, La Tremouille, San Severino, and the veteran La Palisse, fell on the field of battle, and Montmorency was made prisoner. Nevertheless, the Swiss still held their ground manfully, when Alençon, the king’s brother-in-law, fleeing shamefully, and carrying after him part of the French men-at-arms, caused Diesbach’s soldiers, who were fighting at his side and already shouting victory, to waver. At that moment the lansquenets, commanded by the redoubtable Freundsberg, fell furiously on the Swiss and broke them. The Helvetians, seeing the Frenchmen retiring, believed they were to be sacrificed to the hatred of the Germans. John of Diesbach conjured and threatened them in vain; nothing could stop them. Then the valorous captain rushed forward alone against a battalion of lansquenets and fell dead. Bonnivet, in despair, stretched out his neck to the spears of the enemy, and was killed: and Francis I. who was the last to fight, yielded up his sword with a shudder to Lannoy.[[616]]
John of Diesbach had married a French lady, Mademoiselle de Refuge, to whom the king had promised a dowry of 10,000 livres, but had afterwards given her husband, as an equivalent, the lordship of Langes, which the latter had bequeathed to his wife. But in 1533 Francis I. had taken back the estate, without giving the promised dowry. The widow of the hero of Pavia, finding herself thus deprived of her property by the man for whom her husband had died, implored the intervention of Berne, and the chiefs of that republic had commissioned another Diesbach, Rodolph, to proceed to the court of France to support the just claims of his relation. Rodolph departed on the 12th of January, 1534, accompanied by George Schœner. This mission was destined to be of more importance to Geneva than to Berne.[[617]]