It was comparatively easy to procure the summons. The difficulty was to find some one competent to the functions of episcopal usher and bold enough to serve it. Bonivard bethought him of a "caitiff wretch"--an obscure priest--to whom he handed the document with two round dollars lying on it, and bade him hand the paper to the bishop at mass the next day in the cathedral. The starving clergyman hesitated long between his fears and his necessities, but finally promised to do the work on condition that the prior should stand by him in person and see him through. The hour approached, and the commissioner's courage was oozing rapidly away. His knees knocked together, and he slipped back in the crowd, hoping to escape. The vigilant prior darted after him, seized him, and laying his hand on the dagger that he wore under his robe whispered in his ear, "Do it or I'll stab you!" He adds, in his _Chronicles_, "I should have been as good as my word: I do not say it by way of boasting. I know I was acting like a fool, but I was quite beside myself with anxiety for my friend." Happily, there was no need of extreme measures. He gripped his terrified victim by the thumb, and as the procession moved toward the church-door he thrust the paper into his hand, saying, "Now's the time! You've got to do it." And all the time he held him fast by the thumb. The bishop came near, and Bonivard let go the wretch's thumb and pushed him to the front, pointing to the prelate and saying, "Do your work!" The bishop turned pale with terror of assassination as he heard the words. But the trembling clerk, not less terrified than the bishop, dropped on his knees and presented the archiepiscopal mandate, gasping out, "My lord, _inhibitur vobis, prout in copia_." Bonivard retreated into his inviolable sanctuary of St. Victor. "I was young enough and crazy enough," he says, "to fear neither bishop nor duke." He had saved poor Pecolat's life, although the work was not finished until the publication of an interdict from the metropolitan silencing every church-bell and extinguishing every altar-candle in the city had brought the bishop to terms.[7]