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Among the best patriots of Geneva was John Pécolat, whom we have already met at the mule supper. He had not Berthelier’s strength of character, but he had spirit. A prey by turns to enthusiasm and fear, at times indulging in the most courageous acts or the most culpable weakness, subject to the blackest melancholy or to fits of the maddest humour, Pécolat was at once a hero and a jester. His social position offered the same contrasts. One of his ancestors had been syndic in 1409, another councillor in 1474; in 1508 his father had exercised the highest functions in the State, and he was himself one of the Council of Fifty; he was well instructed, understood Latin, and yet was a hosier by trade. It is true that at this time we often find traders invested with the highest offices; it is one of the peculiarities of democratic manners; and we meet with examples of it in modern society. An accident which deprived him of the use of his right arm, compelled him to give up his business, reduced him to poverty, and plunged him at first into great dejection. However, that did not last long, and there was no man in Geneva that had such fits of gaiety. At a banquet, nobody was louder than Pécolat; he laughed and joked; pun followed pun, in rapid succession. ‘What happy things come into his head!’ said everybody, and ‘it was these happy things,’ adds the chronicler, ‘that gave him access to good tables.’106 When he entered the room a frank and hearty greeting, an enthusiasm mingled with laughter welcomed his arrival. But Pécolat had hardly left his friends when dark thoughts mounted to his brain. Sitting in his narrow chamber, he thought of his maimed arm, his indigence, his dependent life; he thought frequently too of the liberties of Geneva, which he saw sacrificed; and this strange man who made all the city laugh, would burst into tears. It was not long before Pécolat compromised himself in such a manner as to furnish arms against the patriots of Geneva.

The Bishop of Maurienne, precentor of the cathedral and canon of Geneva, who had a suit against the bishop, was then staying in the city and ‘feasting’ the citizens. Having one day invited several of his friends, and among others his colleague the Abbot of Bonmont, who always had a grudge against the bishop for depriving him of the diocese, he invited Pécolat also. During the dinner the two prelates worked themselves into a passion against the bastard of Savoy: each tried who could attack him the most bitterly, and indeed he gave them a fair handle. Pécolat began to do as the others, and to let fly his usual epigrams against the bastard. Maurienne had no end of complaints. ‘Pray, my lord,’ said Pécolat, ‘do not vex yourself about the bishop’s injustice: non videbit dies Petri: he will not live as long as St. Peter!’ This was a saying they were in the habit of applying to the popes at the time of their coronation; and Pécolat meant to say that the bishop, who, as everybody knew, was suffering under an incurable disease, could not live long. Two Savoyards, creatures of the duke and the bishop, who were of the party, went immediately and repeated these words to the bastard. ‘At sumptuous tables,’ said the prior of St. Victor, who was probably one of the guests, ‘there are always gluttons picking up words that will get them another dinner.’ The episcopal court concluded from the Latin proverb that the independents were conspiring against the bishop, and that Pécolat announced the prelate’s death as near at hand. This speech was not sufficient, however, to send him to trial: they waited for some act that would serve as a pretence for the charge of assassination.107

The opportunity soon occurred. Not long after, the duke having crossed the mountains to present his homage to Queen Claude of Brittany, whom Francis I. had just married, and who was then at Lyons, invited the bishop to come and see him in this city. The bastard set off immediately: his steward ordered some fish pasties as provision for the journey, and the purveyor, whether from hurry or from desire to make a large profit, used fish that had been kept too long. The bishop did not touch them, but some of his people having eaten of them, fell sick; it was asserted that one of them died. The bastard, whose conscience was none of the easiest, saw an assassin everywhere; and though in this matter of the pasties there was nothing but what was very natural, he thought or seemed to think that it was an attempt at poisoning. The idea occurred to certain Savoyards that they might make use of this story to accuse Pécolat, and show the cardinals that the prince-bishop’s subjects were conspiring against him.

Pécolat had so little to do with my lord’s kitchen that at first the vidame refused to prosecute; but the affair of Messire Gros’ mule having occurred, and greatly annoyed the judges, they hesitated no longer. Pécolat was one of the band who had cried ‘The skin of the gross beast!’ On the 27th of July, 1517, a warrant was issued against him.

It was necessary to arrest Pécolat; but that was no easy thing, for the members of the society Who touches one touches all, would no doubt rise and defend him. It was resolved to arrange the matter carefully. First they would get the most determined of the young men out of Geneva; then they would entice Pécolat into some lonely place; and finally, as they knew not what might happen, the bishop should go and stay in some castle beyond the reach of the Genevese. This triple stratagem was immediately put into execution. The Count of Genevois, who played the part of a jovial host, organised a grand hunt of wild animals, the rendezvous being at Vouache, two leagues to the west of Geneva; he invited the Abbot of Bonmont, Bonivard, and many young men of the city, whose names were in the black book, that is, whom they wished to get rid of. While this joyous company was hunting with hound and horn at the foot of Mont Saleve, the bishop wishing to enjoy a fresher air (it was said) had repaired, escorted by a few gentlemen, to his castle of Thiez between the mountains of Mole, Voirons, and Reposoir, on the road to Mont Blanc, a little above the point where the Giffre torrent joins the Arve. At the same time one Maule, a secret agent of the vidame, invited Pécolat to take a walk with him to Pressinge, a village situated between the lake and the Voirons, where one of them possessed some property. Ten horsemen setting out from the castle of Thiez lay in ambush. They surrounded the two pedestrians, bound and carried them to the castle, where the bishop having released the tempter, threw Pécolat into prison. When the news of this treachery reached Geneva, the irritation was directed against Maule still more than against the bishop. The traitor, who seems to have been a man of debauched life, was loaded with the people’s maledictions. ‘May the cancer eat Maule up!’ they cried; and this saying became a proverb applicable to traitors ever afterwards.108

He had however played his part so well that the imprisoned Pécolat was exasperated not against him but against his most intimate friend Berthelier. His black fit came over him. He said to himself that although a man of the most inoffensive character, he seemed destined to expiate the faults of all his party. With what had they to reproach him? Mere jokes and laughter.... Berthelier was the real conspirator, and he was at large.... On the 3rd of April Pécolat was removed from the dungeon into which he had been thrown, and conducted to the top of the castle, under the roof. The bishop had ordered him ‘to be examined and forced to speak the truth;’ and the torture-room was at the top of the castle. After the usual preliminaries the examination began. The plot of the non videbit and the salt fish was too absurd; M. de Thoire, the examining judge, dwelt but little upon it, and endeavoured particularly (for that was the object of the arrest) to obtain such admissions as would ruin Geneva and her principal citizens. As Pécolat deposed to nothing that would inculpate them, he was tied by one hand to the rope, and, as he still refused to answer, was hoisted four feet from the floor. The poor fellow groaned deeply and speaking with difficulty109 said: ‘Cursed be Berthelier for whom I am shut up!’ He made no confession, however.

The next day they resorted to another expedient. The bishop gave himself the pleasure of keeping the wretched man hanging to the cord while he was at dinner. The servants, as they passed backwards and forwards waiting on their master, said to Pécolat: ‘You are very stupid to let yourself be put to such torture: confess everything. What will your silence help you? Maule has told everything; he has named So-and-so ... the Abbot of Bonmont, for instance, whom you want to make your bishop after you have done for my lord.’ All these traps were useless—he made no confession. It was next determined to expose Pécolat to a more cruel torture: the executioners tied his hands behind his back, and then pulled the rope so as to raise his arms above his head; lastly they lifted him five or six feet from the floor, which was enough to dislocate his shoulders. Pécolat suffered horribly, and he was not a Regulus. ‘Let me down! let me down!’ he cried, ‘and I will tell all.’ ... The judges, delighted at having vanquished the obstinate rebel at last, ordered him to be lowered. Terror was in his heart, and his features betrayed the trouble of his mind. The man, usually so gay and so witty, was now pale, affrighted, his eyes wandered, and he fancied himself surrounded by hungry dogs. He said all that they wanted him to say. To the falsest imputations against the noblest of his friends he answered ‘Yes, yes!’ and the satisfied judges sent him back to his dungeon.110

This was no comfort to the unhappy Pécolat: more terrible anguish awaited him there. The thought that he had deposed against his best friends and even incurred the guilt of bearing false witness, alarmed him seriously: the fear of God’s judgment surpassed all the terrors which men had caused him. ‘Gentlemen,’ said he to the noble F. de Thoire and others standing round him, ‘my declarations were extorted from me only by the fear of torture. If I had died at that moment, I should have been eternally damned for my lies.’111

The bastard, not liking to feel himself within the same walls as his victim, had removed to St. Joire, two leagues from Thiez, and there attentively watched the examination and the torture. He had acquired a taste for it; and accordingly on the 5th of August he ordered another prisoner to be put to the question. ‘I have some here who say plenty of good things,’ he wrote to Geneva.112 These ‘good things’ were the false witness extorted by pain and which permitted the imprisonment of the innocent. The terror increased in Geneva every day. People kept themselves indoors, the streets were deserted: a few labourers only could be seen in the fields. Bonivard, who feared, and not without cause, that the bishop and the duke wished to carry him off also, did not leave St. Victor’s. ‘Things are in such a state,’ he said, ‘that no one dares venture into the country lest he should be treated like Pécolat.’ Many of the citizens quitted Geneva. One day two friends happened to meet in a room of the hostelry of St. Germain on the Jura. ‘Where are you going?’ asked one of them who had just come from Lyons. ‘I am leaving Geneva,’ answered the other, by name Du Bouchet. ‘They have so tortured Pécolat that his arms remained hanging to the rope, and he died upon the rack.’ Du Bouchet added: ‘The Church not having the right of putting men to death, my lord of Geneva will have to send somebody to Rome to get him absolved. He weeps greatly about it, they say; but I place no trust in such crocodile’s tears!... I am going to Lyons.’113

The bishop had no notion of excusing himself to the pope: on the contrary, he thought only of pursuing his revenge. The decoy was in the cage and some small birds with him; he wished now at any cost to catch the large one,—Berthelier. Most of the youth of Geneva were either out of the way or disheartened; the league Who touches one touches all was nearly dissolved, at the moment when it ought to have been ready to save its founder. The bishop thought it superfluous to resort to stratagem or violence and simply required the syndics to surrender the great agitator to him. At eight o’clock in the evening of the 28th of July, 1517, the council was sitting, when the president who was on the bishop’s side said: ‘It is my lord’s pleasure that we take up one of his subjects against whom he possesses sufficient informations which he will communicate in proper time and place; and that when the said subject is in prison, the syndics shall execute justice, if the affair requires it.’114 At these words every one looked at a seat which was empty for the first time. Berthelier’s friends were uneasy; and as the bishop had adopted a lawful course, the council answered the prelate that they would take up the accused, provided that on his part he maintained the liberties of Geneva.

As the councillors left the Hôtel de Ville in the dark, they said to one another: ‘It is Berthelier.’ The friends he had among them ran off to tell him the news, conjuring him to escape the vengeance of the prince by flight. Bonivard joined his entreaties to theirs: ‘The sword is over your head,’ he said.—‘I know it,’ answered Berthelier, ‘yes, I know that I shall die, and I do not grieve at it.’ ‘Really,’ said Bonivard, ‘I never saw and never read of one who held life so cheap.’ The friends of the noble-minded citizen redoubled their entreaties. They represented to him that there remained in Geneva only a small number of civic guards, imperfectly trained to arms;115 that one part of the burgesses would assent through fear to the plots of the Savoyard party, and that another part would aid them. Berthelier still resisted: ‘God,’ said he, ‘will miraculously take away their power.’116 His friends resorted to another argument. There happened to be just then in Geneva some envoys from Friburg; Berthelier’s friends begged him to depart with them. ‘Out of Geneva,’ they said, ‘you will serve the city better than within.’ That consideration decided him. He went during the night to the hostelry of the Friburgers. ‘We leave to-morrow,’ they told him; ‘here is a livery cloak with the arms of Friburg; put it on, and thus disguised you shall come with us, like one of the state riders. If you are not recognised at the gates of Geneva or in the Pays de Vaud, you are safe.’ The Friburgers left the city very early: the guard looked at them for a moment as they passed the gate, but without suspecting that the great republican was with them. He was safe.

The next day the syndic Nergaz having delivered the message of the council to the bastard of Savoy, the latter was exasperated because instead of seizing Berthelier, they simply told him that they intended doing so. ‘Do you mean to give him time to escape?’ he asked. The council immediately ordered a great display of force to arrest the liberal leader. His friends the councillors, who knew him to be already far away in the country, let his enemies go on. ‘Shut all the city gates,’ said they. ‘Assemble the tithing men and the tens; summon the vidame to assist in executing the law; let the syndics preside in person over the search for the culprit.’117 ‘Bravo!’ whispered some aside, ‘shut the cage ... the bird has flown.’ The most zealous of the bishop’s partisans hurried off to close the gates. The syndics and tithing men set out, followed by a great number of citizens, and all went towards Berthelier’s house. They searched every chamber, they sounded every hiding-place, but found nobody. Some were angry, others laughed in their sleeves; the most violent, supposing he had escaped to one of his friends, put themselves at the head of the troop and searched every house that Berthelier was in the habit of frequenting. As a six days’ search led to nothing, they were forced to rest satisfied with summoning the accused by sound of the trumpet. No one had any more doubts about his escape: the liberals were delighted, but anger and vexation prevailed at the castle.