“Bonivard, you are free!”

“And Geneva?”

“Geneva is free also!”

You ought to have heard the enthusiasm with which our guide told this story!

Near by are the relics of the cell of a companion of Bonivard, who made an ineffectual attempt to liberate him.  On the wall are still seen sketches of saints and inscriptions by his hand.  This man one day overcame his jailer, locked him in his cell, ran into the hall above, and threw himself from a window into the lake, struck a rock, and was killed instantly.  One of the pillars in this vault is covered with names.  I think it is Bonivard’s pillar.  There are the names of Byron, Hunt, Schiller, and many other celebrities.

After we left the dungeons we went up into the judgment hall, where prisoners were tried, and then into the torture chamber.  Here are the pulleys by which limbs are broken; the beam, all scorched with the irons by which feet were burned; the oven where the irons were heated; and there was the stone where they were sometimes laid to be strangled, after the torture.  On that stone, our guide told us, two thousand Jews, men, women, and children, had been put to death.  There was also, high up, a strong beam across, where criminals were hung; and a door, now walled up, by which they were thrown into the lake.  I shivered.  “’Twas cruel,” she said; “’twas almost as cruel as your slavery in America."[43]

Then she took us into a tower where was the “oubliette.”  Here the unfortunate prisoner was made to kneel before an image of the Virgin, while the treacherous floor, falling beneath him, precipitated him into a well forty feet deep, where he was left to die of broken limbs and starvation.  Below this well was still another pit, filled with knives, into which, when they were disposed to a merciful hastening of the torture, they let him fall.  The woman has been herself to the bottom of the first dungeon, and found there bones of victims.  The second pit is now walled up....

To-night, after sunset, we rowed to Byron’s “little isle,” the only one in the lake.  O, the unutterable beauty of these mountains—­great, purple waves, as if they had been dashed up by a mighty tempest, crested with snow-like foam! this purple sky, and crescent moon, and the lake gleaming and shimmering, and twinkling stars, while far off up the sides of a snow-topped mountain a light shines like a star—­some mountaineer’s candle, I suppose.

In the dark stillness we rode again over to Chillon, and paused under its walls.  The frogs were croaking in the moat, and we lay rocking on the wave, and watching the dusky outlines of the towers and turrets.  Then the spirit of the scene seemed to wrap me round like a cloak.  Back to Geneva again.  This lovely place will ever leave its image on my heart.  Mountains embrace it.

BY RAIL UP THE GORNER-GRAT[44]

BY ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL KNOWLES