de Vaud and the Duke of Cophingen (whoever he may have been) besieged
Peter in it. Perhaps they might have taken him. But the wine was so
good, and the pretty girls of the country were so fond of dancing! They
forgot themselves in these delights. All at once Little Charlemagne was
upon them. He leaves his force at Chillon, and goes by night to spy out
the enemy at Villeneuve, returning at dawn to his people. He came back
very gayly; when they saw him so joyous, "What news?" they asked. "Fine
and good," he answers; "for, by God's help, if you will behave
yourselves well, the enemy is ours." To which they cried with one voice,
"Seigneur, you have but to command." They fell upon the barons and the
duke, and killed a gratifying number of their followers, carrying the
rest back to Chillon, where Peter "used them not as prisoners, but
feasted them honorably. Much was the spoil and great the booty."

Afterwards Peter lost the castle, and in retaking it he launched fifty
thousand shafts and arrows against it. "The castle was not then an
isolated point of rock as we now see it, but formed part of a group of
defences."


VIII

Two or three centuries later--how quickly all those stupid, cruel, weary
years pass under the pen!--the spirit of liberty and protestantism began
to stir in the heads and hearts of the burghers of Berne and of Geneva.
A Savoyard, Francis de Bonivard, prior of St. Victor, sympathized with
them. He was noble, accomplished, high-placed, but he loved freedom of
thought and act. Yet when a deputation of reformers came to him for
advice, he said: "It is to be wished, without doubt, that the evil
should be cast out of our midst, provided that the good enters. You burn