One of its interesting associations is with the Waldenses. These persecuted Protestants had fled, or been driven out, from their mountain home above Turin. Switzerland received them hospitably, but they were homesick. They resolved to go back; not to slink back in twos and threes, but to march back, with their flags flying, like courageous Christian soldiers. They mustered at Nyon, and thence crossed the lake under the leadership of the fighting pastor, Henri Arnaud, and marched across the mountains to effect their 'glorious re-entry.' It was a great military feat, and no less a judge than Napoleon has paid his tribute to the military genius of the commander. The returning exiles defeated the soldiers of Savoy in more than one pitched battle. One thinks of them generally as the 'slaughtered saints, whose bones' inspired one of the finest of Milton's sonnets, but theirs were not the only bones that whitened the valleys during that notable expedition. Nyon again recalls the memory of Bonstetten, who governed it for a season on behalf of Berne. If all the Bernese Governors had been like him, Vaud would have been a contented country, though he is chiefly remembered as a wit and a man of culture, who lived to be eighty-seven without ever seeming to grow old. In his youth he travelled in England, and was the friend of Gray; in his old age he lived at Geneva, and was the friend of Byron. In the meantime he had been the friend of Madame de Staël, and a pillar of the cosmopolitan society at Coppet. He wrote some books, but they are dead and buried. What lives is the recollection of the genial old gentleman whom everybody liked, and who proved--what needed a great deal of proving--that it was possible for a Bernese to be gracious and frivolous, and to have a sense of humour. He detested the society of his native city, and wrote a delightfully sarcastic description of its daily life in a letter to one of the Hallers: 'We are living here, as we always do. We sleep, we breakfast, we yawn, we drag through the morning, and we digest our food. And then we dine, and then we dress, and then we swagger in the Arcades, and say to ourselves: "I am charming and clever, for the spelling of my name makes me capable of governing and illuminating two hundred thousand souls." And then we accost a lady with a pretty figure decently enveloped in a mantle, and then we go to a party and circle round a dozen turtle-doves, and deliver ourselves of platitudes with the air of saying something clever. Then we have something to eat, and, finding our intellectual resources exhausted, amuse ourselves with paper games; and then we go to bed, feeling satisfied with ourselves--for we have been delightful.'