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Pécolat’s condemnation became the chief business of the court of Turin in its relations with Geneva. Archbishop Seyssel, who at that time possessed great influence, was not for despotism: he approved of moderating the royal authority, but hated republics, and wished to take advantage of Pécolat’s trial to crush the spirit of liberty, which was displaying so much energy in Geneva, and which might spread farther. Feeling the importance of this case, in combating the Huguenot influence, the archbishop determined to withdraw, if possible, the Genevan from his natural judges, and resorted to a trick unworthy so great a statesman. He represented that high treason, the crime of which Pécolat was accused, was not one of those comprehended under the constitutions of the city, and that the cognisance belonged therefore to the prince; but he could not succeed. ‘We have the power,’ answered the syndics, ‘to take cognisance of every criminal case.’ All that Seyssel could obtain was that the bishop should appoint delegates who would sit in court and give their opinion, but not vote.127

The judges met in the Château de l’Ile on the 10th of December, 1517; they were surrounded by the duke’s and the bishop’s attorneys, the governor of Vaud, and other partisans of Savoy. Among the six councillors who were to sit with the syndics (the judges being thus ten in number), were some decided ducal partisans, upon whom the bishop could rely for a sentence of condemnation. Poor Pécolat, still suffering, was brought in by the vidame. The sight of the syndics—of the elder Lévrier, Richardet, and Porral—revived his courage: he knew that they were just men and enemies of episcopal despotism. ‘The confessions I made at Thiez,’ he said, ‘were wrung from me by torture: the judge dictated the words and I repeated them after him. I knew that if I did not say what they wanted, they would break my arms, and maim me for ever.’128

After this declaration, the examination began: the clearness of Pécolat’s answers, his gentleness and candour, showed all present that they had before them an innocent man, whom powerful princes desired to destroy. The syndics having declared that they were bound to acquit him, the bishop said: ‘Give him the question, and you will see clearly that he is guilty.’ The syndics refused, whereupon the two princes accused them of being partial and suspected men. The episcopal council, therefore, decided, that the city and the bishop should each appoint four judges—an illegal measure, to which the syndics submitted.

The new examination ought to have taken place on the 20th of January, 1518; but Pécolat, suffering from the torture past and terrified by the torture to come, had fallen seriously ill, and it was necessary to send the doctor to him. This man consented to his being carried before the court. The four episcopal judges immediately called for the question, but the syndics opposed it, and the episcopal delegates began to study this living corpse. After examining him attentively they said: ‘He still affords some hold for the torture; he may be examined with a few torments’ (such is the expression in the report). Nergaz siding with the Savoyard doctors, the torture was decided upon. Poor Pécolat began to tremble from head to foot; he knew that he should denounce all his friends, and cursed his own weakness. They tied his hands behind his back, they showed him the rack, and interrogated him.... ‘However, they did not torture him,’ continues the report, ‘considering the weakness of his body and his long imprisonment.’ They thought that the fear of the rack would suffice to make him speak; they were deceived; the sick—we might almost call him the dying man, though tied up and bound, having the instrument of torture before him, answered with simplicity and frankness. Even the bishop’s judges were struck with his candour, and two of them, ‘having the fear of God before their eyes,’ says Bonivard, rather than the fear of men, declared roundly: ‘They have done this poor man wrong. Non invenimus in eo causam. We find no fault in him.’129

This honourable declaration embarrassed the duke all the more that he had other anxieties on his mind. The news from Piedmont was bad: every day he received letters urging him to return. ‘The Marquis of Montferrat.’ they told him, ‘is committing serious depredations.’ But the headstrong prince was ready to lose his own states, if he could but get Geneva—and lose them he did not long after. Finding himself on the point of discovering a conspiracy, calculated to satisfy the cardinals, he resolved not to yield. His creatures and those of the prelate held conference after conference; at last they found a means—a diabolical means—of putting Pécolat to death. Seeing that lay judges were not to be persuaded to condemn an innocent man, they resolved that he should be tried by priests. To put this plan into execution, it was necessary to change the layman—the ex-hosier, the merry fellow who was at every banquet and every masquerade—into a churchman. They succeeded. ‘To gratify their appetite,’ said Bonivard, ‘they produced a forged letter, to the effect that Pécolat was an ordained clerk ... and therefore his case belonged not to the secular, but to the ecclesiastical judge.’ The fraud found, or seemed to find belief in the official world. ‘Accordingly,’ goes on the chronicle, ‘they transferred him from the Château de l’Ile, which was the lay prison, to the bishop’s palace which was the Church court, and he was placed once more in the hands of the Pharisees.’ This was a stroke worthy of a celebrated religious order not yet in existence, but which was about to be founded to combat the Reformation. Henceforth we shall see none of that silly consideration, of that delicate circumspection, which the laymen had employed. The bishop, now become judge and party, ‘deliberated how to handle him well.’ Some persons having asserted that Pécolat could not endure the rack, the doctors again examined his poor body: some said yes and others no, so the judges decided that the first were right, and the instrument of torture was prepared. It was not only heroic men like the Bertheliers and Lévriers, who, by their daring opposition to arbitrary power, were then raising the edifice of liberty; but it was also these wicked judges, these tyrannical princes, these cruel executioners, who by their wheel and rack were preparing the new and more equitable times of modern society.130

When Pécolat was informed of the fatal decision, his terrors recommenced. The prospect of a new torture, the thought of the accusations he would make against his friends, disturbed his conscience and plunged him into despair.... His features were distorted by it, his beard was in disorder, his eyes were haggard: all in him expressed suffering and terror. His keepers, not understanding this state of his mind, thought that he was possessed by a devil. ‘Berthelier,’ said they, ‘is a great charmer, he has a familiar spirit. He has charmed Pécolat to render him insensible to the torture; try as we may, he will say nothing.’ It was the belief at that time that the charmers lodged certain devils in the patients’ hair. The prisoner’s long rough beard disquieted the bishop’s officers. It was resolved that Pécolat should be shaved in order to expel the demon.131

According to rule it should have been an exorcist and not a barber that they should have sent for. Robed in surplice and stole, the priest should have made the sign of the cross over Pécolat, sprinkled him with holy water, and pronounced loud-sounding anathemas against the evil spirit. But no, the bishop was contented to send a barber, which was much more prosaic; it may be that, besides all his other vices, the bastard was a freethinker. The barber came and got his razor ready. The devil whom Pécolat feared, was his own cowardice. ‘I shall inculpate my best friends,’ he said to himself; ‘I shall confess that Berthelier wished to kill the bishop; I shall say all they want me to say.... And then if I die on the rack (which was very possible, considering the exhaustion of his strength) I shall be eternally damned for having lied in the hour of death.’ This idea alarmed him; a tempest agitated his soul; he was already in agony. ‘It is better,’ he thought, ‘to cut off an arm, a foot, or even the tongue, than fall into everlasting perdition.’ At this moment the barber, who had wetted the beard, quitted the room to throw the water out of the basin; Pécolat caught up the razor which the man had left on the table by his side and raised it to his tongue; but moral and physical force both failing him, he made only a gash. He was trying again, when the barber returned, sprang upon him in affright, snatched the razor from his hand, and raised an alarm. The gaoler, his family, and the prince’s surgeon rushed in and found Pécolat ‘coughing and spitting out blood in large quantities.’ They seized him and began to stanch the blood, which it was not difficult to do. His tongue was not cut off, as some have asserted; there was only a deep wound. The officers of the duke and the bishop took extraordinary pains to cure him, ‘not to do him good,’ say the chronicles, ‘but to do him a greater ill another time, and that he might use his tongue in singing whatever they pleased.’ All were greatly astounded at this mystery, of which there was great talk throughout the city.132 Pécolat’s wound having been dressed, the bastard demanded that he should be put to the rack, but Lévrier, feeling convinced that Pécolat was the innocent victim of an illegal proceeding, opposed it. The bishop still persisted in the necessity of obtaining a confession from him: ‘Confession!’ replied the judge, ‘he cannot speak.’—‘Well then,’ answered, not the executioner but, the bishop, ‘let him write his answer.’ Lévrier, as firm when it was necessary to maintain the respect due to humanity as the obedience due to the law, declared that such cruelty should not be practised before his tribunal. The bishop was forced to give way, but he kept account of this new offence on the part of the contumacious judge.133

All Geneva pitied the unhappy man, and asked if there was no one to deliver him from this den of thieves? Bonivard, a man who afterwards knew in his own person the horrors of a prison, never ceased thinking of the means of saving him. He loved Pécolat; he had often admired that simple nature of his, so impulsive, so strong and yet so weak, and above all his devotion to the cause of the liberties of the city. He felt that human and divine rights, the compassion due to the unhappy, his duty towards Geneva, (‘although I am not a native,’ he said,)—all bound him to make an effort. He left his monastery, called upon Aimé Lévrier, and expressed his desire to save Pécolat. Lévrier explained to him that the bishop had forbidden any further steps, and that the judges could not act without his consent. ‘There is however one means,’ added he. ‘Let Pécolat’s relations demand justice of me; I shall refuse, alleging the prince’s good pleasure. Then let them appeal, on the ground of denial of justice,134 to the metropolitan court of Vienne.’ Bonivard, full of imagination, of invention, of resources, heedless of precedents, and energetic, immediately resolved to try this course. The Archbishop of Vienne (he argued) being always jealous of the Bishop of Geneva, would be delighted to humble his powerful colleague. ‘I have friends, relations, and influence in Savoy,’ said he, ‘I will move heaven and earth, and we will teach the bastard a pretty lesson.’ He returned to his monastery and sent for Pécolat’s two brothers. One of them, Stephen, enjoyed the full confidence of his fellow-citizens, and was afterwards raised to the highest offices; but the tyranny of the princes alarmed everybody: ‘Demand that your brother be brought to trial,’ said Bonivard to the two brothers.—‘No,’ they answered, ‘the risk is too serious.’ ... Bonivard’s eloquence prevailed at last. Not wishing to leave them time for reflection, he took them forthwith to Lévrier; the petition, answer, and legal appeal were duly made; and Stephen Pécolat, who by contact with these two generous souls had become brave, departed for Vienne in Dauphiny with a warm recommendation from the prior. The Church of Vienne had enjoyed from ancient times the title of holy, of maxima sedes Galliarum, and its metropolitan was primate of all Gaul. This prelate, delighted with the opportunity of making his authority felt by a bishop who was then more powerful than himself, summoned the procurator-fiscal, the episcopal council, and the bishop of Geneva to appear before his court of Vienne within a certain term, to hear judgment. In the meanwhile he forbade the bishop to proceed against the prisoner under pain of excommunication. ‘We are in the right road now,’ said Bonivard to Lévrier. But who would serve this daring summons upon the bishop? These writs of Vienne were held in such slight esteem by the powerful prelates of Geneva, that it was usual to cudgel the bearers of them. It might be foreseen that the bishop and duke would try every means to nullify the citation, or induce the archbishop to recall it. In short, this was not an ordinary case. If Pécolat was declared innocent, if his depositions against Berthelier were declared false, what would become of the scheme of Charles III. and Leo X. at which the bishop himself so basely connived? Geneva would remain free.... The difficulties which started up did not dishearten Bonivard; he thought that the devices set on foot to enslave the city were hateful, and that as he wished to live and die there, he ought to defend it. ‘And then,’ adds a chronicler, ‘the commander of St. Victor was more bold than wise.’ Bonivard formed his resolution. ‘Nobody,’ he said, ‘dares bell the cat ... then I will attempt the deed.’ ... But his position did not permit him ‘to pass the river alone.’ It was necessary that the metropolitan citation should be served on the bishop by an episcopal bailiff. He began to search for such a man; and recollecting a certain poor clerk who vegetated in a wretched room in the city, he sent for him, put two crowns in his hand, and said: ‘Here is a letter from the metropolitan that must be delivered to the bishop. The duke and the prelate set out the day after to-morrow for Turin; to-morrow morning they will go and hear mass at St. Pierre; that will be the latest hour. There will be no time after that. Hand this paper to my lord.’ The clerk was afraid, though the two crowns tempted him strongly; Bonivard pressed him: ‘Well,’ said the poor fellow, ‘I will promise to serve the writ, provided you assist me personally.’ Bonivard agreed to do so.

The next day the prior and the clerk entered the cathedral. The princes were present, surrounded with much pomp: it was high mass, a farewell mass; nobody was absent. Bonivard in his quality of canon had a place of honour in the cathedral which would have brought him near the bishop; but he took care not to go there, and kept himself at a distance behind the clerk in order to watch him; he feared lest the poor man should get frightened and escape. The consecration, the elevation, the chanting, all the sumptuous forms of Roman worship, all the great people bending before the altar, acted upon the unlucky bailiff’s imagination. He began to tremble, and when the mass was ended and the moment for action arrived, ‘seeing,’ says Bonivard, ‘that the game was to be played in earnest,’ he lost his courage, stealthily crept backwards, and prepared to run away. But Bonivard, who was watching him, suddenly stepped forward, seized him by the collar, and placing the other hand upon a dagger, which he held beneath his robe, whispered in his ear: ‘If you do not keep your promise, I swear I will kill you.’ The clerk was almost frightened to death, and not without cause, ‘for,’ adds Bonivard in his plain-spoken ‘Chronicles,’ ‘I should have done it, which I do not say to my praise; I know now that I acted foolishly. But youth and affection carried me away.’ He did not kill the clerk, however; he was satisfied with holding him tightly by the thumb, and with a firm hand held him by his side. The poor terrified man wished in vain to fly: Bonivard’s dagger kept him motionless; he was like a marble statue.135

Meanwhile the duke, his brother the count, and the bishop were leaving the church, attended by their magnificent retinue, and returning to the episcopal palace, where there was to be a grand reception. ‘Now,’ said Bonivard to the clerk, ‘no more delay, you must discharge your commission;’ then he put the metropolitan citation into the hand that was free, and still holding him by the thumb, led him thus to the palace.

When he came near the bishop, the energetic prior letting go the thumb, which he had held as if in a vice, and pointing to the prelate, said to the clerk: ‘Do your duty.’ The bishop hearing these words, ‘was much afraid,’ says Bonivard, ‘and turned pale, thinking I was ordering him to be killed.’ The cowardly prelate turning with alarm towards the supposed assassin cast a look of distress upon those around him. The clerk trembled as much as he; but meeting the terrible eye of the prior and seeing the dagger under his robes, he fell on his knees before the bishop, and kissing the writ, presented it to him, saying: ‘My lord, inhibitur vobis, prout in copia.’136 He then put the document into his hand and ran off: ‘Upon this,’ adds the prior, ‘I retired to my priory of St. Victor. I felt such juvenile and silly arrogance, that I feared neither bishop nor duke.’ Bonivard had his culverins no longer, but he would yet have stood a siege if necessary to bring this matter to a successful issue. The bishop never forgot the fright Bonivard had caused him, and swore to be even with him.

This energetic action gave courage to others. Fourscore citizens more or less implicated with Pécolat in the affair of the rotten fish—‘all honest people’—appeared before the princes, and demanded that if they and Pécolat were guilty, they should be punished; but if they were innocent that it should be publicly acknowledged. The princes, whose situation was growing difficult, were by no means eager to have eighty cases in hand instead of one. ‘We are sure,’ they answered, ‘that this poisoning is a thing invented by certain wicked men, and we look upon all of you as honest people. But as for Pécolat, he was always a naughty fellow; for which reason we wish to keep him a short time in prison to correct him.’ Then fearing lest he should be liberated by force during their absence, the princes of Savoy had him transferred to the castle of Peney, which was contrary to the franchises of the city. The transfer took place on the 29th of January, 1518.137

A division in the Church came to Pécolat’s assistance. Since the struggles between Victor and Polycrat in the second century, between Cyprian and Stephen in the third, dissensions between the catholic bishops have never ceased; and in the middle ages particularly, there were often severe contests between the bishops and their metropolitans. The Archbishop of Vienne did not understand yielding to the Bishop of Geneva, and at the very moment when Luther’s Theses were resounding throughout Christendom—in 1517 and 1518—the Roman Church on the banks of the Rhone was giving a poor illustration of its pretended unity. The metropolitan, finding his citations useless, ordered the bishop to liberate Pécolat, under pain of excommunication;138 but the episcopal officers who remained in Geneva, only laughed, like their master, at the metropolitan and his threats.

Pécolat’s friends took the matter more seriously. They feared for his life. Who could tell whether the bastard had not left orders to get rid of the prisoner, and left Geneva in order to escape the people’s anger? These apprehensions were not without cause, for more than one upright man was afterwards to be sacrificed in the castle of Peney. Stephen Pécolat and some of his brother’s friends waited on St. Victor; ‘The superior metropolitan authority has ordered Pécolat to be released,’ they said; ‘we shall go off straight in search of him.’ The acute Bonivard represented to them that the gaolers would not give him up, that the castle was strong, and they would fail in the attack; that the whole people should demand the liberation of the innocent man detained by the bishop in his dungeons, in despite of the liberties of the city and the orders of his metropolitan. ‘A little patience,’ he continued; ‘we are near the beginning of Lent, holy week is not far off; the interdict will then be published by the metropolitan. The christians finding themselves deprived of the sacrament will grow riotous, and will compel the bishop’s officers to set our friend at liberty. Thus the inhibition which we served upon the bishop in his palace, will produce its effect in despite of him.’ The advice was thought sound, they agreed to it, and everybody in Geneva waited with impatience for Easter and the excommunication.

Anthony de la Colombière, official to the metropolitan of Vienne, arrived to execute the orders of his superior, and having come to an understanding with the prior of St. Victor and judge Lévrier, he ordered, on the 18th of March, that Pécolat should be released within twenty-four hours. He waited eight days, but waited in vain, for the episcopal officers continued to disobey him. Then, on Good Friday, the metropolitan officers, bearing the sentence of excommunication and interdict, proceeded to the cathedral at two o’clock in the afternoon, and there, in the presence of John Gallatin, notary, and three other witnesses, they posted up the terrible monition; at four o’clock they did the same at the churches of St. Gervais and St. Germain. This was not indeed the thunder of the Vatican, but it was nevertheless the excommunication of a prelate who, at Geneva, filled the first place after the pope in the Roman hierarchy. The canons, priests, and parishioners, as they went to evening prayers, walked up to the placards and were quite aghast as they read them. ‘We excommunicate,’ they ran, ‘the episcopal officers, and order that this excommunication be published in the churches, with bell, book, and candle. Moreover, we command, under pain of the same excommunication, the syndics and councillors to attack the castles and prisons wherein Pécolat is detained, and to liberate him by force. Finally we pronounce the interdict against all places wherein these excommunicates are found. And if, like the deaf adder, they persist in their wickedness, we interdict the celebration not only of the sacraments, but also of divine service, in the churches of St. Pierre, Notre Dame la Neuve, St. Germain, St. Gervais, St. Victor, St. Leger, and Holy Cross.’139 After the canons and priests had read this document, they halted in consternation at the threshold of the church. They looked at one another, and asked what was to be done. Having well considered, they said: ‘Here’s a barrier we cannot get over,’ and they retired.

As the number of devout catholics was still pretty large in Geneva, what Bonivard had foreseen came to pass; and the agitation was general. No more services, no more masses, no baptisms, no marriages ... divine worship suspended, the cross hidden, the altars stripped.140 ... What was to be done? The chapter was sitting, and several citizens appeared before them in great irritation. ‘It is you,’ they said to the terrified canons, ‘that are the cause of all this.’ ... Nor was this all. The excommunicates of the Savoyard parishes of the diocese used to come every year at the approach of Easter and petition the bishop’s official for letters of consentment, in order that their parish priests might give them the communion. ‘Now of such folks there chanced to be a great number at Geneva. Heyday, they said, it is of no use putting one obstacle aside, when another starts up immediately, all owing to the fault of these episcopal officers!’ ... The exasperated Savoyards united with the Genevans, and the agitated crowd assembled in front of the cathedral gates; the men murmured, the women wept, even priests joined the laity. Loud shouts were heard erelong. The people’s patience was exhausted; they took part against their bishop. ‘To the Rhone,’ cried the devout, ‘to the Rhone with the traitors! the villains who prevent us from receiving our Lord!’ The excommunicated episcopal officers had a narrow escape from drowning. All the diocese fancied itself excommunicated, and accordingly the confusion extended beyond the city. The syndics came up and entreated the citizens to be calm; and then, going to the episcopal council, the bishop being still absent, they said: ‘Release Pécolat, or we cannot protect you against the anger of the people.’ The episcopal officers seeing the bishop and the duke on one side, the metropolitan and the people on the other, and impelled in contrary directions, knew not whom to obey. It was reported to them that all the city was in an uproar, that the most devout catholics wished at any cost to communicate on Easter Sunday, and that looking upon them as the only obstacle which prevented their receiving the host, they had determined to throw them over the bridge. ‘The first of you that comes out shall go over,’ cried the crowd. They were seized with great alarm, and fancying themselves half drowned already, wrote to the governor of Peney to release Pécolat forthwith. The messenger departed, and the friends and relations of the prisoner, not trusting to the episcopal court, accompanied him. During the three-quarters of an hour that the walk occupied, the crowd kept saying:—suppose the governor should refuse to give up his victim; suppose the bastard’s agents have already carried him away—perhaps put him to death? None of these suppositions was realised. Deep in a dungeon of the castle, the poor man, heavily chained, in utter darkness, wrecked both in mind and body, was giving way to the blackest melancholy. Suddenly he hears a noise. He listens; he seems to recognise well-known voices: it was his brothers and his friends arriving noisily under the walls of the castle, and giving utterance to their joy.

Their success was, however, less certain than it appeared to them. Strange things were, in fact, taking place at that moment in Geneva. The bishop and the duke had not been so passive as had been imagined, and at the very instant when the messenger bearing the order from the episcopal court, and accompanied by a body of Genevans, was leaving by the French gate, a courier, with an order from the Roman court, entered by the Savoy gate. The latter went with all speed to the bishop’s representatives, and handed them the pontifical letters which the princes had obtained, and by which the pope annulled the censures of the metropolitan. This Roman messenger brought in addition an order from the bishop forbidding them on their lives to release Pécolat. The bastard had shuddered at the thought that the wretch whom he had so successfully tortured, might escape him: he had moved heaven and earth to keep him in prison. We may imagine the emotion and alarm which fell upon the episcopal councillors when they read the letters handed to them. The coincidence of the moment when these two contradictory orders left Geneva and arrived there is so striking, that we may ask whether these letters from Rome and Turin were not supposed—invented by the episcopal officers themselves; but there is nothing in the narrative to indicate a trick. ‘Immediately on reading the letters, the episcopal officers with all diligence countermanded the release.’ These words in the ‘Annals’ show the precipitation with which they endeavoured to repair the mistake they had committed. There was not, in fact, a moment to lose, if they wished to keep Pécolat. Several officers got on horseback and set off full gallop.

The bearers of this order were hardly halfway, when they met a numerous jubilant and noisy crowd returning from Peney. The friends of Pécolat, preceded by the official letters addressed to the governor, had appeared before that officer, who, after reading the despatch over and over, had thought it his duty to obey. Pécolat’s friends hurried after the gaoler, who, carrying a bunch of keys in his hand, went to open the cell; they entered with him, shouting release! They broke the prisoner’s chains; and, finding him so weak, carried him in their arms and laid him in the sunshine in the castle yard. Without loss of time they placed him in a peasant’s cart and all started for Geneva. This was the crowd met by the episcopal officers. The Genevans were bringing back their friend with shouts of joy. In vain did the episcopal officers stop this joyous band, and require that the prisoner should be led back to Peney; in vain did they speak of the bishop and even of the pope; all was of no use. Despite the rogations of the pope, the prelate, and the messengers, the people carried Pécolat back in triumph. This resistance offered to the Roman pontiff, at the moment he was lending assistance to the bastard in his oppression of a poor innocent man, was, as it were, an affair of outposts; and the Genevans were thus training themselves for more notable battles. ‘Forward,’ they shouted, ‘to the city! to the city!’ and the crowd, leaving the episcopal officers alone in the middle of the road, hastened to the gates.

At last they approached Geneva, and there the excitement was not less great than on the road. Pécolat’s return was the triumph of right over injustice, of liberty over despotism; and accordingly it was celebrated with enthusiasm. The poor man, dumb (for his wound was not yet healed), shattered by the torture, and wasted away by his long captivity, looked silently on all around him, and experienced an emotion he could hardly contain. After such trials he was returning into the old city amid the joyous cries of the population. However, his friends did not forget the orders of the pope and the bishop; and fearing lest the vidame should again seize the poor fellow, they took him to the convent of the Grey Friars of Rive, an asylum reputed inviolable, and quartered him in the cell of his brother, the monk Yvonnet. There the poor invalid received all the affectionate attendance he required; he remained some time without saying much; but at last he recovered his speech, ‘by the intercession of a saint,’ said the priests and Pécolat himself, as it would appear. Was it devoutly or jestingly that he spoke of this pretended miraculous cure? We shall not decide. Bonivard, who perhaps no longer believed in the miracles of saints, assigns another reason: ‘The surgeons dressed the wound in his tongue;’ and he adds: ‘He always stuttered a little.’ If Bonivard had doubts about the saints, he believed in the sovereign justice of God: ‘Then came to pass a thing,’ he said, ‘which should not be forgotten; all the judges who condemned Pécolat to be tortured died this year, one after another, which we cannot suppose to have happened except as a divine punishment.’

The remembrance of Pécolat’s torture long remained in the memory of the citizens of Geneva, and contributed to make them reject the rule of the Romish bishops.141 In fact the interest felt for this victim of episcopal cruelty was manifested in every way. The cell of brother Yvonnet, in the Grey Friars’ convent, was never empty; everybody wished to see the bishop’s victim. The prior of St. Victor was one of the first to come, attended by several friends. The poor man, being tongue-tied, told ‘the mystery of his sufferings with his fingers,’ says Bonivard. It was long since there had been such an interesting sight in Geneva. The citizens, standing or sitting around him, could not turn their eyes away from his thin pale face. By his gestures and attitudes Pécolat described the scenes of the examination, the torture, and the razor, and in the midst of these remembrances which made the tears come to his eyes, he from time to time indulged in a joke. The young men of Geneva looked at each other and trembled with indignation ... and then sometimes they laughed, at which the episcopal officers ‘were terribly enraged.’ The latter were in truth both vexed and angry. What! they receive an order from the bishop, an order from the pope, and only a few minutes before they have issued a contrary order! Strange mishap! Not knowing whom to blame, they imprisoned the governor, who had only released Pécolat by their command, and to cover their responsibility were actually planning to put him to death.

Some timid and alarmed citizens dared not go and see Pécolat; one of these was Blanchet, the friend of Andrew Navis, who had been present at the famous meeting at the Molard and the momon supper, and who, falling not long after beneath the bishop’s violence, was doomed to expiate his errors by a most cruel death. Blanchet is the type of a character frequent at this epoch. Having learnt, shortly after the famous momon banquet, that a certain individual whose name even he did not know, but who, he said, ‘had given him the lie to his face,’ was in Burgundy, Blanchet set off after him, gave him a box on the ears, and returned. He came back to Geneva, thence he went into Faucigny, and afterwards to Italy; he took part in the war between the pope and the Duke of Urbino (who so terribly frightened Leo X.); returned to Pavia, thence to Turin, and finally to Geneva. His cousin Peter, who lived in Turin, had told him that during his travels Pécolat had been arrested for plotting against the bishop. ‘I shall not go and see him,’ he said, ‘for fear of compromising myself.’ In spite of his excessive precaution, he could not finally escape the barbarous vengeance of the prelate.142