It is a hardship to the writer to be compelled to retrench the story of the early deeds for liberty of Bonivard and his boon companions. There is a rollicking swagger about them all, which by and by begins to be sobered when it is seen that on the side of the oppressor there is _power_. By violence, by fraudulent promises, by foul treachery on the part of cowardly citizens, the duke of Savoy gains admittance with his army within the walls of Geneva, and begins his delicious and bloody revenge for the indignities that have been put upon his pretensions and usurpations. Berthelier, a very copy from the antique--a hero that might have stepped forth into the sixteenth century from the page of Plutarch[8]--remained in the town serenely to await the death which he foreknew. On the day of the duke's entrance Bonivard, who had no such relish for martyrdom for its own sake, put himself between two of his most trusted friends, the lord of Voruz and the abbot of Montheron of the Pays de Vaud, and galloped away disguised as a monk. "Come first to my convent," said the abbot, "and thence we will take you to a place of safety." The convent was reached, and in the morning Bonivard was greeted by his comrade Voruz, who came into his room, and, laying paper and pen before him, required him to write a renunciation of his priory in favor of the abbot of Montheron. Resistance was vain. He was a prisoner in the hands of traitors. The alternative being "Your priory or your life!" he frankly owns that he required no time at all to make up his choice. Voruz took the precious document, with the signature still wet, and went out, double locking the door behind him. His two friends turned him over to the custody of the duke, who locked him up for two years at Grolee, one of his castles down the Rhone, and put the honest abbot of Montheron in possession of the rich living of St. Victor. But Bonivard in his prison was less to be pitied than the citizens of Geneva who remained in their subjugated city. The two despots, the bishop and the duke, who had seized the unhappy town, combined to crush the gay and insubordinate spirit out of it. All this time, says Bonivard, "they imprisoned, they scourged, they tortured, they beheaded, they hung, so as it is pitiful to tell."