The vidame placed him in the middle of his soldiers, and Berthelier marched off quietly, still carrying the weasel with him. The little timid animal thrust its pretty head into its master’s bosom, while the latter encouraged it by gentle caresses. In this way he arrived at the Château de l’Ile, and the vidame, stationing guards everywhere, even in the prisoner’s chamber,[261] shut him up in Cæsar’s tower. On the spot where walls had formerly been erected by the destroyer of the liberties of Rome, a humble and almost unknown citizen, one of the founders of modern liberty, was to find a bloody prison.[262] Berthelier, shut up in the fortress, and surrounded by guards pacing up and down his chamber and round the castle, felt more free than all of them. We do not say that he possessed the freedom that christianity gives; perhaps it was rather from the _Tusculans_ of Cicero than from the Gospel that he had derived the calm with which his soul was filled; yet it is almost impossible not to recognise a noble, serious--we could almost say christian sentiment in him. As he saw death approaching, he said that all it had to do was to remove its mask, for underneath was the face of a friend. To die ... what was that? Does not the meanest soldier expose himself to it on the battle-field? Was not the death he was about to suffer for the independence of his country a thousand times sweeter and more glorious than that of a mercenary? Dulce et decorum pro patria mori.[263] Yet his soul was agitated. Those smiling fields he loved so well, those graceful banks of the lake and river, those mountains where the setting sun fired the everlasting snows, those friends whose idol he was, his country above all, and the liberty which he desired to win for her ... all these images rose before him in his prison, and deeply stirred his heart. But he soon returned to calmer thoughts. He hoped that his death would lead to the deliverance of Geneva, and then his courage returned. Yet he was without bravado, and to the soldiers around him he showed only a simple and candid soul. His little favourite animal still played in his bosom; surprised at everything about it, the weasel at the least noise would prick up its short wide ears. Berthelier smiled and caressed it. ‘The better to mock his guards,’ says the prior of St. Victor, ‘he played with his weasel.’[264] Bonivard, inclined to take things by the wrong side, saw mockery where there was only good-nature. In fact, the guards, rough and violent men, touched by so much patience and courage, said to Berthelier: ‘Ask my lord’s pardon.’--‘What lord’s?’--‘My lord duke of Savoy, your prince and ours.’--‘He is not my prince,’ he said, ‘and if he were, I would not ask for pardon, because I have done no wrong. It is the wicked who should beg for pardon, and not the good.’--‘He will put you to death, then,’ said the guards. Berthelier made no reply. But a few minutes after, he went up to the wall and wrote: ‘_Non moriar sed