THE CASTLE OF CHILLON.
Religion was not neglected in those days; in the chapel one admires the beautiful ogive of the nave. From the Hall of Justice a stairway leads down into the vaults below. These are caverns about a hundred meters long. The floors are only eight feet above the lake, which goes off very abruptly down to the deepest depths. These vaults are partitioned off into chambers of different sizes, separated by narrow, dark spaces and used for dungeons. Each of the subterranean cells contains a row of pillars, surmounted by ogive arches. They are like the sombre and almost magical dungeons under the ancient King Arkel’s castle, where Pélléas and his jealous brother grope in Maeterlinck’s marvellous drama.
The last and largest of these terrible apartments is the one where Bonivard was confined. It is entered by a low, narrow doorway, and is divided by seven huge pillars, around one of which is the legendary groove hollowed by the restless pacing of the prisoner’s circling feet. Above are several narrow slits admitting a dim light. On bright days the light reflected from the lake casts a weird radiance on the ceiling. Little trembling waves go chasing one another across. Bonivard could tell when it was morning, for then the light is blue, while in the afternoon it has a sickly, greenish hue.
Francis Bonivard was born at Seyssel and was educated at Turin. At twenty he became prior of Saint Victor, a small monastery near Geneva. He joined the political organization, called “The Children of Geneva,” which was engaged in a revolt against the Bishop and Duke of Savoy. He said—“I foresee that we shall finally do what our friends in Berne have done—separate from Rome. I was twenty years old and I was led like the others more by affection than by counsel, but God granted a happy issue to all our foolish undertakings, and treated us like a good father.”
The duke managed to capture him and imprisoned him for two years at Gex and Gerolles. Later, he fell a second time into the duke’s clutch.
Bonivard tells how it happened:—“At Moudon I resolved to return to Lausanne. When we were in the Jorat, lo, the Captain of the Castle of Chillon, Antoine de Beaufort, with some of his companions, comes out of the forest where he was concealed and approaches me suddenly. These worthy gentlemen fall on me all at once and make me a prisoner by the captain’s order and, though I show them my passport, they carry me off tied and bound to Chillon, where I was compelled to endure my second suffering for six years.”
This was from 1530 till 1536. He was treated mildly at first, but afterwards he was thrown into the dungeon and fastened to one of the pillars. “I had so much time for walking,” he says with a sort of grim humour, “that I wore a little pathway in the rock, as if it had been done with a hammer.”
In 1536 the Bernese sent troops to help Geneva, which was besieged by Duke Charles III. Reinforced by the Genevese fleet after the relief of Geneva, they in turn besieged Chillon. The governor with his escort fled to Savoy and Bonivard was set free. His first words were:—“And Geneva?”
“Also free,” was the laconic reply.