Our guide was a rosy Savoyard girl in blue skirt, scarlet bodice and white apron. Dangling a bunch of ponderous keys from her forefinger, she tripped across a courtyard shut in by the tall buildings and peaked roofs, and paved with round stones, to a flight of cellar-steps. Just such cellar-steps as are used by farmers’ wives and dairymaids in going to and from buttery and cream-room. The descent of six or eight stairs, worn and uneven, brought us to the subterranean chapel of the Dukes of Savoy, a long, low room floored with roughened stones, the ceiling supported by four thick pillars, and so dim, on the windowless side, as to cast doubt upon the received theory of its original uses. Although Religion, as understood and practised by thirteenth century lordlings and their vassals, was a thing that lurked in and filled the dark places of the earth. Next, was a small room, not eight feet square, where the condemned by the worshipers in the adjoining chapel, passed the night preceding his execution. A niche in the rear wall was filled to half its height by a sloping ledge,—a rocky bed, inclining upward at the head. On this, the doomed wretch lay until the morning looked in upon his misery through the slit in the outer wall. This series of vaults was supplied with all the ancient improvements for executions. In the third apartment a black bar, extending across the cell, was the gallows, and in the wall near the floor an aperture, now closed with rude masonry, finished the drama with business-like promptness, being the “chute” into eight hundred feet of water.
“Lake Leman lies by Chillon’s walls,
A thousand feet in depth below,
Its massy waters meet and flow.”
Two hundred feet, more or less, do not materially alter the story, or diminish or increase the horror.
Bonnivard’s prison—the dungeon of Chillon—is beyond the cell of execution and the last of the grim suite of basement state-apartments. The Prisoner of Chillon may have been the child of the poet’s brain. Bonnivard was not a myth. Three times in arms against the ravening beasts of war, known by the courtesy of history, as Dukes of Savoy, and twice a prisoner, he was, at his second capture, immured in the Castle of Chillon. Six weary years were spent by him in this rocky dungeon. During two of these, he was chained to one of the “seven pillars of Gothic mold” upbearing the ceiling. A stone of irregular shape is embedded in the floor at its base. I sat down upon it; put my feet into the hollow worn by his, as he rested thus, night after night, day by day, year upon year!
The girl had disappeared, in answer to a call from the outer-room. Caput leaned against the pillar beside me. We could just trace the circle beaten out of the solid stone by the prisoner’s measured pacing, around the pillar as far as the chain would let him go,—then, back again. It is plain enough by day, but the light was failing where we were. Caput struck a match and held it close to the mournful little track;—another, that we might decipher Byron’s name upon the “autograph column.” Then, the blue flame expired, and the gloom was deeper than before. We hearkened silently to the lap of the lake against the foundation-stones, and the moan of the rising wind; watched the glimmering slits, without glass or shutters, that admitted light and air.
“A double dungeon wall and wave
Have made—and like a living grave!”
quoted Caput. “It is worse! The dead do not dream!”