Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, page 69 by Various Authors
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r years of dungeon-life is, that "he had such abundant leisure for promenading that he wore in the rock pavement a little path as neatly as if it had been done with a stone-hammer."[12]
One March morning in 1536 the Prisoner of Chillon heard through the windows of his dungeon the sound of a cannonade by land and lake. It was the army of Berne, which was finishing its victorious campaign through the Pays de Vaud by the siege of the duke's last remaining stronghold, the castle of Chillon. They were joyfully aided by a flotilla fitted out by Geneva, which had never forgotten its old friend. That night the dungeon-door was burst open, and Bonivard and three fellow-prisoners were carried off in triumph to Geneva.
Not Rip Van Winkle when he awoke from his long slumber in the Catskills, not the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus when they came back from their sepulchre and found their city Christian, had a better right to be surprised than the prior of St. Victor when he got back to Geneva. Duke and bishop and all their functionaries were expelled; priests and preaching-friars were gone; the mass was abolished; in the cathedral of St. Peter's and all the lesser churches, which had been cleared of their images, there were singing of psalms and preaching of fiery sermons by Reformers from France; and the streets through which he had sometimes had to move by stealth were filled with joyous crowds to hail him as a martyr. St. Victor was no more. If he went to look for his old home, he found a heap of rubbish, for all the suburbs of the city that might give shelter to an enemy had been torn down by the unsparing patriots of Geneva, and the trees had been felled. The joyous city had ceased, and Bonivard's prophecy to his roystering companions was not long in being fulfilled for himself as well as for them: they soon found Calvin's little finger to be heavier than the bishop's loins.
And yet the heroic little town showed a noble gratitude toward the old friend of its liberties. The house which he chose out of all t