At last they approached Geneva, and there the excitement was not less great than on the road. Pécolat’s return was the triumph of right over injustice, of liberty over despotism; and accordingly it was celebrated with enthusiasm. The poor man, dumb (for his wound was not yet healed), shattered by the torture, and wasted away by his long captivity, looked silently on all around him, and experienced an emotion he could hardly contain. After such trials he was returning into the old city amid the joyous cries of the population. However, his friends did not forget the orders of the pope and the bishop; and fearing lest the vidame should again seize the poor fellow, they took him to the convent of the Grey Friars of Rive, an asylum reputed inviolable, and quartered him in the cell of his brother, the monk Yvonnet. There the poor invalid received all the affectionate attendance he required; he remained some time without saying much; but at last he recovered his speech, ‘by the intercession of _a saint_,’ said the priests and Pécolat himself, as it would appear. Was it devoutly or jestingly that he spoke of this pretended miraculous cure? We shall not decide. Bonivard, who perhaps no longer believed in the miracles of saints, assigns another reason: ‘The surgeons dressed the wound in his tongue;’ and he adds: ‘He always stuttered a little.’ If Bonivard had doubts about the saints, he believed in the sovereign justice of God: ‘Then came to pass a thing,’ he said, ‘which should not be forgotten; all the judges who condemned Pécolat to be tortured died this year, one after another, which we cannot suppose to have happened except as a _divine punishment_.’