=FLIGHT OF ANTONIA.=
Viret became ill, and his friends were heart-broken. 'Alas!' said Froment, 'we expect death for him, and not life.' People asked the cause of this sudden illness, and Antonia, suspected of knowing something about it, was seized with terror. She felt herself already caught and sentenced. 'I know very well that it is no sport,' she exclaimed. Her imagination was heated; she went to the house where her children lived, and, taking the youngest in her arms, leading a second by the hand, the others following her, she ran with alarm to the shore of the lake, wishing to escape, and her little ones with her. 'Take me away from the city,' she said to the boatmen. They carried her as far as Coppet, about three leagues off. Claude Bernard and one or two of his friends, who had reasons for mistrusting the woman, jumped into a boat, and, having found her, brought her back. They did not, however, charge her with anything; but her conscience accused her: her agitation kept increasing during the passage; and her haggard eyes were fixed upon her old master, his friends, and the boatmen. 'You are betraying me,' she said: 'you are playing me a trick.' At length they arrived. Antonia got out of the boat first, and while Bernard and his friends were occupied in landing the children, she slipped away lightly, plunged into a dark alley between the Molard and the Fusterie, hurried through it, climbed the Rue de la Pélisserie, and reached the house of Canon D'Orsière, who had said to her: 'Act, act boldly, you need not be anxious.'—'Save me!' she exclaimed. The canon hid her in his cellar. But some people had seen a woman pass hurriedly along: the officers of justice searched the canon's house, found Antonia crouching in a dark underground cellar, and took her away to prison, where she confessed everything.
Meanwhile Viret was in peril of death, and, as there was no woman at Bernard's to tend him, Dame Pernette, a pious Christian, and wife of the councillor Michael Balthasard, begged that he might be removed to her house, which was done. Froment, who went to see him often, said: 'Really, Dame Pernette is doing him a great service, and showing him great kindness.' One doctor said he was poisoned, another denied it. The whole city was filled with the affair: men and women assembled and expressed their sorrow. 'Must the Church be robbed of such a pearl,' they said, 'by such a miserable creature?... Poor Viret! Poor reformers!... Sword-cuts in the back, poison in front.... Such are the rewards of those who preach the Gospel!' Viret was saved, but he felt the effects of the poison all his life.[498]
The investigation began on the 13th of April. Antonia was not of a character to conceal her crime: the vénéfique, as they called the poisoner, declared openly she was led into it by the 'round caps (the clergy).'[499] The priests, and even the canon who had ruined her, were arrested and taken to prison. A canon arrested by laymen! All the clergy were in commotion: Aimé de Gingins, the bishop's vicar-general, represented to the syndics that a canon ought not to be imprisoned by anybody, not being a subject of the State, but only of the chapter. The magistrates declared that the investigation of criminal matters belonged to them, and the priests were forced to submit to be tried according to the common law—a great innovation in the sixteenth century.
=EXECUTION OF ANTONIA.=
Antonia was condemned to have her head cut off, her body hung on the gibbet of Champel, and her head fixed on a nail. At first she remained firm. 'Take care, my lords,' she said, 'that your servants do not poison you, for there are many who practise it.' But when she had returned to prison, she became quite prostrated. Pale and speechless, she rolled her haggard eyes around her. It was still worse when she was led to the place of execution. Her mind wandered: she was like one of those personages spoken of in antiquity, who were said to be pursued by the Furies. Although surrounded by an immense crowd, she did not observe it: her eyes seemed fixed on some mysterious beings. She fancied she saw the priests of Geneva and the monks of Ambournay standing round her. 'Take them away, take them away!' she exclaimed, waving her hand; and as the guards showed by their looks of astonishment that they did not know what she meant, 'Take them away,' she resumed, pointing with her finger at what she believed she saw; 'in heaven's name take away those round-caps who are before me; ... it is they who are the cause of my death!' Having mounted the scaffold, she cried out again in great anguish: 'Take them away!' and her head fell.[500] She paid dearly for her crime—a crime too frequent in those days, when fanatics thought it their duty to serve by violence the cause which they said was the cause of God. The adversaries of the Reformation, in the countries which it reached, have too frequently employed the arms of iniquity against it.
The guilty project of getting rid of the three Reformers at once had the opposite consequences to what its authors had hoped. The atrocity of the attempt increased the love of the people for the Reform, and detracted greatly from the reputation of the priests. The most sinister reports were circulated about them. It was said that they had tried to poison the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper, in order to cut off all the reformed at a blow. People shrank from them in the streets as they passed, as if their simple approach could inflict death.[501]
All Geneva was in commotion: a transformation of that little state became imminent. At this time ambitious popes and despotic princes exercised absolute power. Two kinds of enfranchisement were necessary for Christendom: that of the nation and that of the Church. The Genevese sought after both: some rallied round the banner of faith, others round that of liberty; but the more enlightened minds saw that these two holy causes should never be separated; and that the political awakening of a nation can only succeed so far as the awakening of the conscience tends to prevent disorder.[502] In no country, perhaps, were these two movements so simultaneous as in Geneva. Certain natural phenomena are studied in microscopic animalcules: a moral phenomenon may be illustrated in the history of this small city which may be enunciated in these words: 'He who desires to be free must believe.'[503]
The Gospel, however, was not as yet triumphant. While the Roman-catholics always had their parishes, their churches, and numerous priests, the reformed had but one place of worship, and three ministers. Such a state of things could not last long. An important event occurred to hasten the victory of the Gospel and of liberty.
=JACQUES BERNARD CONVERTED.=