The next day the prior and the clerk entered the cathedral. The princes were present, surrounded with much pomp: it was high mass, a farewell mass; nobody was absent. Bonivard in his quality of canon had a place of honour in the cathedral which would have brought him near the bishop; but he took care not to go there, and kept himself at a distance behind the clerk in order to watch him; he feared lest the poor man should get frightened and escape. The consecration, the elevation, the chanting, all the sumptuous forms of Roman worship, all the great people bending before the altar, acted upon the unlucky bailiff’s imagination. He began to tremble, and when the mass was ended and the moment for action arrived, ‘seeing,’ says Bonivard, ‘that the game was to be played in earnest,’ he lost his courage, stealthily crept backwards, and prepared to run away. But Bonivard, who was watching him, suddenly stepped forward, seized him by the collar, and placing the other hand upon a dagger, which he held beneath his robe, whispered in his ear: ‘If you do not keep your promise, I swear I will kill you.’ The clerk was almost frightened to death, and not without cause, ‘for,’ adds Bonivard in his plain-spoken ‘Chronicles,’ ‘I should have done it, which I do not say to my praise; I know now that I acted foolishly. But youth and affection carried me away.’ He did not kill the clerk, however; he was satisfied with holding him tightly by the thumb, and with a firm hand held him by his side. The poor terrified man wished in vain to fly: Bonivard’s dagger kept him motionless; he was like a marble statue.[135] Meanwhile the duke, his brother the count, and the bishop were leaving the church, attended by their magnificent retinue, and returning to the episcopal palace, where there was to be a grand reception. ‘Now,’ said Bonivard to the clerk, ‘no more delay, you must discharge your commission;’ then he put the metropolitan citation into the hand that was free, and still holding him by the thumb, led him thus to the palace.