The Bishop’s Departure.
The fugitive band reached the secret postern; the prelate had the key; he passed through and stood on the shore of the lake. There was no enemy in sight. He entered a boat which had been got ready for him, and reached the other bank. He sprang immediately upon the horse that was waiting for him, and rode off at a gallop. He felt the weight upon his heart grow lighter the farther he went. Now the fierce huguenots will trouble him no more, and he will ‘make good cheer.’ ‘He retired to the Tower of May,’ says the chronicle, ‘and never returned again.’[[399]]
Baudichon de la Maisonneuve had succeeded beyond his expectations. Not only had the prisoners been rescued from the unlawful power of the bishop, but the prelate himself had disappeared. A few huguenots, waving their montres de feu, had been sufficient to deliver Geneva. Not a drop of blood had been shed. ‘As at the sound of the trumpets of Gideon, and at the sight of his lamps,’ said the evangelists, ‘the Amalekites and the Midianites fled during the night, so did the bishop and his followers flee away at the sound of the arms and at the sight of the fire.’[[400]]
Early in the morning of the 14th of July, the news of the bishop’s departure circulated through the city. The catholic members of the council, deserted by a perjured prince, felt themselves unable henceforth to oppose the torrent which was advancing with irresistible power. ‘All the catholics,’ says Sister Jeanne, ‘were sorely grieved.’ The pope blamed the bishop for abandoning his church, and reproached him for his cowardice.[[401]] ‘That miserable city, having lost its prince and pastor,’ said people in Italy, ‘will become the asylum of every villain and the throne of heresy.’[[402]] But what caused so much sorrow to the papists was the source of immense joy to the evangelicals. They contended that the prince by running away abdicated his usurped power, and that the citizens resumed their rights.[[403]] The sun of Geneva was setting, according to the old style (that of the Roman court); but according to the new (that of the Gospel), it was rising; and Geneva, illumined by its rays, was to communicate that divine light to others. The 14th of July, 1533, witnessed in Geneva the fall of that hybrid power[[404]] which claims to hold two swords in its hand. Since then other bishop-kings have also disappeared, even in the most catholic countries; and the last, that of Rome, totters on his pedestal. The people of Geneva, from the time when they lost sight of that shameless and pitiless prelate, ceased to care about him, and never asked after him. They even invented a by-word, in use to this day; and when they wish to speak of a man for whom they feel a thorough indifference, they say: Je ne m’en soucie pas plus que de Baume (I do not care a straw about him).[[405]]
CHAPTER II.
TWO REFORMERS AND A DOMINICAN IN GENEVA.
(July to December 1533.)
The bishop had fallen from his throne, and with him had expired a despotism which offensively usurped the liberties of the people; the lawful magistrates once more sat in their curule chairs, with liberty and justice at their sides. They investigated the cases of the citizens whom Pierre de la Baume claimed to get rid of without the formality of trial. The only man who could be accused of Wernly’s death was Pierre l’Hoste, and he had taken refuge in the Dominican church, where the bishop had not cared to follow him. The syndics went to the church; the poor wretch, shaking in every limb, clung vainly to the altar, and cried out: ‘I claim the privileges accorded to this sanctuary.’ He was arrested and the inquiry commenced. It proved the innocence of the imprisoned Huguenots, and showed that the disturbance in which Wernly fell had been caused by the violence of the canon himself, who was armed from head to foot, and had taunted his adversaries with loud cries. The magistrates, however, thought that the blood of the victim called for the blood of him who had shed it. Pierre l’Hoste, the carman of the city, denied striking the fatal blow, but confessed that he had struck Wernly: he was condemned and beheaded. All the other prisoners were released.
But there was no relief to Claudine Levet’s sorrow; her husband was still confined in Castle Gaillard, and the governor refused to release him. The council entreated the Bernese deputies in Geneva to intercede in behalf of the prisoner, and on the 4th of September, one of them, accompanied by J. Lullin and C. Savoye, having gone out to Ville-la-Grand, about a league from the city, Aimé Levet was surrendered to them.[[406]]
Froment And Alexander Arrive.
While this pious man lay in the Gaillard dungeons, the insults heaped upon him, the harshness of the prison, and the almost certain death which threatened him, had given his faith a new life; so that when the castellan had released him from his bonds, he inwardly vowed that he would make his deliverance accelerate the triumph of the Gospel. He had scarcely reached home, when he wrote to Anthony Froment, the evangelist, whose church had been the market-place, and whose pulpit a fishwife’s stall, and conjured him to return. The latter did not hesitate, and knowing that the struggles which awaited him there were beyond the strength of one man, he invited one of the brethren from Paris, and at that time in the Pays de Vaud to accompany him. This was Alexander Canus, called also Dumoulin. One day, therefore, Aimé and Claudine Levet saw the two evangelists arrive. One lodged with them at St. Gervais on the right bank, and the other at Claude Salomon’s, near the Molard, on the left bank; being thus quartered in the two parts into which the city was divided, they could share the labor.
Salomon, who shared with Levet the honor and danger of receiving the evangelists, was as gentle as his friend Maisonneuve was quick and often violent. One day, shortly after the bishop’s flight, the latter saw in front of him in the street two of the bishop’s partisans, whom he suspected to be getting up some conspiracy; his blood boiled at the sight, and he exclaimed: ‘there are so many traitors here.... My fingers itch to be at them.’[[407]] A sense of duty, however, restrained him, and he did nothing. But Salomon was calm and full of charity and compassion: he felt none of these passing ebullitions, and thought only of visiting the sick and the poor, and sheltering strangers whom the Romish persecutions drove to Geneva. ‘These poor refugees,’ he said, ‘are more destitute than all the rest.’ His wife, ‘neither dainty nor nice,’[[408]] lavished her cares on them. They were the Gaius and Dorcas of Scripture.