The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1896-09-09
The Prisoner OF ChilIOn,

mental objurgation over the tyranny which
consigned the hero of the poem and his Ill
fated brother to the gloomy fortress Aside
from the fact that Francois Downward was
confined there for six years and the marks
left by his footsteps as he paced the gloomy
orypt-conflrmed by his one recorded rem
lniscence of his four years of dungeon life
that - he had such abundant leisure for
promenading that he wore in the rock
pavement little path as neatly as If 1t had
been done with stone hammer''-the
whole poem is, as Byron himself styles It,
"a fable, >" and the two brothers, the mar
tyred father, the anguish of the prisoner
were all the invention of the poet on q
rainy day in the tavern at Auchy, when
and where he wrote the story Even the
level of the dungeon below the water of the
lake turns out to be a mistake, although
Downward believed it was So The floor of
the crypt is eight feet above high water
mark.
The accounts in English about Bonni-
wards life have been heretofore very
meager, though they are voluminous in
French, and Downward himself, after his
release and return to Geneva, wrote very
full narrative of himself and his adven-
lures, though surprisingly reticent about
his prison existence
Leonard Woolsey Bacon, who appears to
have found leisure when at Geneva to study
up considerable amount of reconcile cru
dition among the archives there, has I'M
earthed the whole history of Downward
and given readable summary of it in q
little volume entitled "Irenics and Polem-
les, " in which he also uncovers the mealy
side of the celebrated St Francis de Sales.
strips Garrison of much of bis reputation
as an antislavery pioneer and polemically
discusses some interesting church history
According to his account, Downward,
though a layman, having never taken
monastic vows or holy orders, and wild
young fellow at the time was by arrange
ment at Rome invested on the decease Of
his uncle, the former prior, with the spir-
itual and temporal authority and emolu-
ments, of no inconsiderable amount, of the
priory of st. Victor, rich Benedictine
monastery just outside the eastern gate of
Geneva, surrounded with walls and meats
of its own, independent of the bishop Of
Geneva and of the city, with cortege of a
dozen we'll provided monks.
Here the young prior held gay and fes-
tive court imbibed and INDUCED his APP
petite freely, heard causes, sentenced to
prison, and otherwise aped royalty and
autocracy. He had come from the univer-
sity with theories of republican liberty, and
st. Victor became an outpost in defense OF
the liberties of Geneva and a rendezvous OF
all the young Liberal leaders OF that littlo
republic. Many stories are tod of Lis in
reference to prevent injustice by the Duke
of Savoy and the bishop of Geneva and
his rescue of prosecuted persons from their
tyrannical measures, but thereby he nlado
himself especially obnoxious to tIosc pow
erful individuals, VINO eventually wo1 kcd
out his ruin. He was traitorously in
weighed by two of his most trusted friends,
compelled to renounce his priory in favor
of one of them and turned over to the
custody of the duke, who imprisoned him
for two years in one of his castles, while
at the same time the bishop and the duke
subjugated the city of Geneva and impris-
oned tortured and hanged the citizens.
Some five years later Downward got pos
session again Of his priory, but the estates
had been wrested from it by the duke and
his minions, and he had to depend on the
bounty of the city of Geneva for some
thing to live on, amounting to 81 crowns
monthly-hardly sufficient to enable him
to keep up state worthy of the dignity of
a sovereign. He had again made himself
very obnoxious to the duke by attempting
to regain by force of arms some of the
estates of which he had deprived the priory,
and, having gone to visit his mother who
was i'll at her old home at Seyssel, in Sa-
voy, he was seized in his attempt to return
by emissaries of the duke and secreted in
the dukes castle Of Chillon, and for six
years he was hidden from the world.
The first two years he was kept in the
upper chamber of the castle and treated
kindly, but at the end of this time, on the
duke visiting the castle, he was remanded
to the awful and somber crypt. In 1886
the army of Bern effected his release, and
he was taken in triumph to Geneva, where
he found revolution duke and bishop
and all their functionaries having been ex-
PEELED and the reformers having taken the
place of priests and friars. st. Victor was
no more, only heap of ruins. He was al
lowed to select house, given and furnish
ed at the public expense pension of 200
crowns II year was settled on him, and he
was made n senator of the republic
But his old convivial habits revived, and
he was in continual difficulties with the
officials and his wives, of whom he had in
succession three, but yet devoted much
time to his literary work. His greatest
trouble was with the church authorities,
Calvin at their head, who could not easily
allow for his intirmities and by them he
was looked upon as weakling in religious
matters. He fingered along to the age of
n, watched with 1llial gratitude by the lit
tie state whose liberty he had helped to
save and whose heroic history he had re-
corded. The manuscript of that work was
referred to a committee with Calvin at the
head, who declined to have it printed, but
after the lapse of many years lit has been
the pride of Geneva scholars TO print in
elegant archaic style every page written by
the prisoner of Chillon in prose or verse,
on history, poetry, philosophy and theol-
ogy." The cherished collection of Bonni-
ward S books, which he bequeathed to the
city, as ne died childless, has grown into
the library of a university, and the little
walled town for whose ancient liberty he
ventured such perils and suffered such i'm
prisonments is and for the 800 years since
has been one of the chief radiant centers
of light and liberty for all the world -
Springfield Republican.
I ..,c0N'S >.,u