Beza carries his affectionate partizanship so far as to defend the burning of Servetus for obstinate heresy, by the Genevan authorities. Men have chosen to execrate Calvin as the author of an act which was in exact accordance with the temper of the State-Church at that time. The Council of Geneva, after long and stirring debate, and much advisement with other Cantons, condemned the Spanish heretic-physician to the stake as a political necessity. Farel was earnest in advocating this extreme penalty of the law, and exhorted him, at the place of execution, to recantation. Melanchthon gave it unqualified, if sorrowful sanction, as did Bullinger. The one voice raised against the horrible cruelty was Calvin’s. He pleaded, vainly—since the man must die—that he should be beheaded, not burnt.
The Genevese declare they do not know “just where” this violation of the avowed principles of Protestantism occurred. The burning-place was upon the Champel, a pretty green hill, south of the city.
Of Calvin, guide-books and travelers have long asserted—“No man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.” The truth being that, several years ago, careful measurement of the cemetery of Plain Palais, and examination of the record of his burial, pointed out the locality he desired should be forgotten lest a costly monument might dishonor the memory of the poverty he had borne for Christ’s sake. His bones rest not many rods from the wall of the burial-ground. A lofty hemlock grows directly upon the grave. The boughs have been torn off by relic-hunters as far up as a tall man can reach. A sloping stone of gray granite, a foot square and about as tall at the highest side, is lettered, “J. C.” That is all. There is no mound to warn aside the unwary foot, although the graves about it are carefully kept, distinguished by memorial-tablets and adorned with flowers. Upon his return from Strasbourg, in compliance with the prayers of Geneva—Canton and town—the people gave him, in addition to the “plain house,” a “piece of cloth for a coat.” The bald covering of earth is all he would accept from them in death.
Plain Palais is a dismal last home even for John Calvin. Low, flat and damp on the sunniest days, it is a pity it should not be, as Baedeker describes it—“disused.” But one passes on the route to Calvin’s grave, the gorgeous red granite tomb of the Duke of Brunswick who bequeathed his wealth to the city. And in our numerous visits to the cemetery we rarely went in or out without meeting a funeral train. The paths are greened by moss-slime, and the short winter afternoons are briefer and gloomier for the mists that begin to rise here by four o’clock.
Very different in location and aspect is the grave of the historian of the Reformation, Merle d’Aubigné. The walk up the quay took us past his former residence, a comfortable homestead, now occupied by his widow. Leaving the lake-edge, about half-a-mile from the town, we turned to the left into a crooked road paved with cobble-stones. High walls, covered with ivy and capped by the foliage of fine old trees, rooted within the grounds, seclude on both sides of the way the campagnes of wealthy Genevese who desert them in the winter for the confined streets and noise of the city. A brook of clear water, issuing from the wall, runs gaily down to the lake. The road winds irregularly up the hill, yet so sharply that we were content to rest on the brow, and, sitting upon a wayside bench, enjoy the view of Lake Leman and the Juras on one hand, the Mont Blanc chain of Alps upon the other. The small cemetery was gained by an abrupt turn to the right and another rise. It is enclosed on all sides by a brick wall, entered through strong iron gates, and, we judged from the lack of traces of recent occupancy, was in truth “disused.” D’Aubigné is buried in a corner remote from the gate. Some of his kindred sleep within the enclosure, but none near him. We had read the names of others of the noble race upon mural brasses in the old Cathedral. He selected the spot of his interment “that he might rise in sight of Mont Blanc at the Last Day.”
So runs the story. It was impressive, told, as we heard it, grouped about the grave, the solemn, eternal whiteness of the mountain in full view. A profile of the historian in bas-relief is upon the head-stone. Climbing roses bound this and the mound with lush withes of grayish-crimson and pale-green, and plumes of golden-rod nodded over his head. The ancient wall is hung and heaped with ivy, as common in Geneva and the neighborhood as the grass and field-flowers.
We never knew when we had walked far enough in Switzerland. On this afternoon we extended our ramble a mile further up the lake beyond the cemetery, keeping upon the ridge of the range, to the Diodati House. It is one of the old family seats that stud the hill-sides in all directions. Milton was here a welcome guest for months, and under the patronage of the Diodati, a French translation of “Paradise Lost” was printed. A degenerate son of the house, upon a visit to England, became intimate with a poet of different mold. When Byron left his native land after the separation from his wife, he accepted the invitation of young Diodati to his ancestral home. The host became so enamored of his guest’s society that he assigned to him a suite of apartments overlooking the lake, as his own, so long as he would honor him by occupying them. Shelley had rooms in the neighboring village of Cologny. The balcony before the second-story front windows is designated as the habitual lounging-place of the two at sunset and through moonlight evenings. The morals of Diodati the younger were not amended by the companionships of the year spent by Byron in the enjoyment of his hospitality. Tales of the orgies of the comrades are still rife in the region, to the shame of all three. From this balcony Byron witnessed the thunderstorm by night upon Lake Leman, described in the third canto of Childe Harold, written at the Diodati House. Its pictures of the lake-scenery are faithful and beautiful. The opening lines recur to the memory of the least poetical tourist who has ever read them, when he reclines, as we did on that day, and many others, on the lawn before the mansion.
“Clear, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake,
With the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing,