The Castle of Chillon
Chillon fell to the princes of the house of Savoy in 1033, and Count Peter, whom they nicknamed Little Charlemagne for his prowess and his conquests, built the present castle, after which the barons of the Pays de Vaud and the Duke of Cophingen (whoever he may have been) besieged Peter in it. Perhaps they might have taken him. But the wine was so good, and the pretty girls of the country were so fond of dancing! They forgot themselves in these delights. All at once Little Charlemagne was upon them. He leaves his force at Chillon, and goes by night to spy out the enemy at Villeneuve, returning at dawn to his people. He came back very gayly; when they saw him so joyous, "What news?" they asked. "Fine and good," he answers; "for, by God's help, if you will behave yourselves well, the enemy is ours." To which they cried with one voice, "Seigneur, you have but to command." They fell upon the barons and the duke, and killed a gratifying number of their followers, carrying the rest back to Chillon, where Peter "used them not as prisoners, but feasted them honorably. Much was the spoil and great the booty."
Afterwards Peter lost the castle, and in retaking it he launched fifty thousand shafts and arrows against it. "The castle was not then an isolated point of rock as we now see it, but formed part of a group of defences."
VIII
Two or three centuries later—how quickly all those stupid, cruel, weary years pass under the pen!—the spirit of liberty and protestantism began to stir in the heads and hearts of the burghers of Berne and of Geneva. A Savoyard, Francis de Bonivard, prior of St. Victor, sympathized with them. He was noble, accomplished, high-placed, but he loved freedom of thought and act. Yet when a deputation of reformers came to him for advice, he said: "It is to be wished, without doubt, that the evil should be cast out of our midst, provided that the good enters. You burn to reform our Church; certainly it needs it; but how can you reform it, deformed as you are? You complain that the monks and priests are buffoons; and you are buffoons; that they are gamblers and drunkards, and you are the same. Does the hate you bear them come from difference or likeness? You intend to overthrow our clergy and replace them by evangelical ministers. That would be a very good thing in itself, but a very bad thing for you, because you have no happiness but in the pleasures the priests allow you. The ministers wish to abolish vice, but there is where you will suffer most, and after having hated the priests because they are so much like you, you will hate their successors because they are so little like you. You will not have had them two years before you will put them down. Meanwhile, if you trust me, do one of two things: if you wish to remain deformed, as you are, do not wonder that others are like you; or, if you wish to reform them, begin by showing them how."
