There was so little of the strut of the stage-hero about Bonivard that he could not be comfortable in doing a chivalrous thing without a joke to take off the gloss of it. Before the ducal party had quite given up hopes of him there was a serious affair on their hands--the need of putting out of the way by such means, treacherous and atrocious, as the Savoyards of that day loved to use, one of the noblest of the Geneva magistrates, Aime Levrier. An emissary of the duke, of high rank, kinsman to Bonivard, came to St. Victor and offered the prior magnificent inducements to aid in the plot. With a gravity that must have convulsed the spectators if there had been any, Bonivard pointed to his monastic gown, his prayer-book and his crucifix, and pleaded his deep sense of the sacredness of his office as a reason for having nothing to do with the affair. "Then," says his kinsman, rising in wrath, "I will do the business myself. I'll have Levrier out of his bed and over in Savoy this very night."--"Do you really mean it, uncle? Give me your hand!"--"Then you consent, after all, to help me in the matter?"--"Oh no, uncle: that isn't it. But I know these Genevese are a hasty sort of folk, and I am just going to raise thirty florins to be spent in saying masses to-morrow for the repose of your soul." Before the evening was over, Bonivard found an opportunity of slipping in disguise over to the house of Levrier and giving a hint of what was intended: the notes of preparation for resistance that Berthelier and his friends began at once to make wrought upon the excited nerves of the ambassador and his armed retinue to such a point that they were fain to escape from the town by a secret gate before daylight.