A Railroad Servant
This was very odd language to use to a deputation of reformers, but I confess that it endears the memory of Bonivard to me. He was a thoroughly charming person, and not at all wise in his actions. Through mere folly he fell twice into the hands of his enemies, suffered two years' imprisonment, and lost his priory. To get it back he laid siege to it with six men and a captain. The siege was a failure. He trusted his enemy, the duke, and was thrown into Chillon, where he remained a sort of guest of the governor for two years. The duke visited the castle at the end of that time. "Then the captain threw me into a vault lower than the lake, where I remained four years. I do not know whether it was by order of the duke or from his own motion, but I do know that I then had so much leisure for walking that I wore in the rock which formed the floor of the dungeon a pathlet [vionnet], or little path, as if one had beaten it out with a hammer." He was fastened by a chain four feet in length to one of the beautiful Gothic pillars of the vault, and you still see where this gentle scholar, this sweet humorist, this wise and lenient philosopher, paced to and fro those weary years like a restless beast—a captive wolf, or a bear in his pit. But his soul was never in prison. As he trod that vionnet out of the stone he meditated upon his reading, his travels, the state of the Church and its reform, politics, the origin of evil. "His reflections often lifted him above men and their imperfect works; often, too, they were marked by that scepticism which knowledge of the human heart inspires. 'When one considers things well,' he said, 'one finds that it is easier to destroy the evil than to construct the good. This world being fashioned like an ass's back, the fardel that you would balance in the middle will not stay there, but hangs over on the other side.'"
Bonivard was set free by the united forces of Berne and Geneva, preaching political and religious liberty by the cannon's mouth, as has had so often to happen. That too must have seemed droll to Bonivard when he came to think it over in his humorous way. "The epoch of the Renaissance and the Reformation was that of strong individualities and undaunted characters. But let no one imagine a resemblance between the prior of St. Victor and the great rebels his contemporaries, Luther, Zwinglius, and Calvin. Like them he was one of the learned men of his time; like them he learned to read the Evangels, and saw their light disengage itself from the trembling gleams of tradition; but beyond that he has nothing in common with them. Bonivard is not a hero; he is not made to obey or to command; he is an artist, a kind of poet, who treats high matters of theology in a humorous spirit; prompt of repartee, gifted with happy dash; his irony has lively point, and he likes to season the counsels of wisdom with sauce piquante and rustic bonhomie.... He prepares the way for Calvin, while having nothing of the Calvinist; he is gay, he is jovial; he has, even when he censures, I know not what air of gentleness that wins your heart."
