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."
[Illustration: _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."
[Illustration: _A Bit of Villeneuve_]