J. H. Merle D'Aubigné - History of the Reformation in Europe in the Time of Calvin (Vol. 1-8)

Berthelier, shut up in the fortress, and surrounded by guards pacing up and down his chamber and round the castle, felt more free than all of them. We do not say that he possessed the freedom that christianity gives; perhaps it was rather from the Tusculans of Cicero than from the Gospel that he had derived the calm with which his soul was filled; yet it is almost impossible not to recognise a noble, serious—we could almost say christian sentiment in him. As he saw death approaching, he said that all it had to do was to remove its mask, for underneath was the face of a friend. To die ... what was that? Does not the meanest soldier expose himself to it on the battle-field? Was not the death he was about to suffer for the independence of his country a thousand times sweeter and more glorious than that of a mercenary? Dulce et decorum pro patria mori. 263Yet his soul was agitated. Those smiling fields he loved so well, those graceful banks of the lake and river, those mountains where the setting sun fired the everlasting snows, those friends whose idol he was, his country above all, and the liberty which he desired to win for her ... all these images rose before him in his prison, and deeply stirred his heart. But he soon returned to calmer thoughts. He hoped that his death would lead to the deliverance of Geneva, and then his courage returned. Yet he was without bravado, and to the soldiers around him he showed only a simple and candid soul. His little favourite animal still played in his bosom; surprised at everything about it, the weasel at the least noise would prick up its short wide ears. Berthelier smiled and caressed it. ‘The better to mock his guards,’ says the prior of St. Victor, ‘he played with his weasel.’ 264Bonivard, inclined to take things by the wrong side, saw mockery where there was only good-nature. In fact, the guards, rough and violent men, touched by so much patience and courage, said to Berthelier: ‘Ask my lord’s pardon.’—‘What lord’s?’—‘My lord duke of Savoy, your prince and ours.’—‘He is not my prince,’ he said, ‘and if he were, I would not ask for pardon, because I have done no wrong. It is the wicked who should beg for pardon, and not the good.’—‘He will put you to death, then,’ said the guards. Berthelier made no reply. But a few minutes after, he went up to the wall and wrote: ‘ Non moriar sed vivam et narrabo opera Domini —I shall not die but live and declare the works of the Lord.’ This quotation from the hundred and eighteenth Psalm, where the Messiah speaks by the mouth of David, shows that Berthelier possessed a certain knowledge of Scripture; perhaps it shows us, too, that his soul had cast all its burdens on the Lord. 265

At that time (1519), when christians, trusting in the Bible, were rising at Wittemberg against absolute power in spiritual things, citizens trusting in the ancient charters of liberty were rising at Geneva against absolute power in temporal things. At that time there was no fusion of these two principles. Perhaps Luther did not become liberal; Berthelier certainly did not become protestant. But in the presence of death this great citizen sought consolation in the Word of God and not in the ceremonies of the priest, which is the essence of protestantism. The passage he wrote on the wall has reference to the Saviour’s resurrection. Did Berthelier find in this transformation of the King of believers a solid reason for expecting for himself a resurrection, a glorious transformation? Did he hope, after this world, for a glorified world of imperishable felicity, the everlasting abode of the children of God?—We believe so.

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The prisoner was soon diverted from these wholesome thoughts by the arrival of the officers of justice. According to the privileges of Geneva, he could only be tried by the syndics; but the bastard suspected this lawful tribunal, and finding no honest man that would undertake to act against the law, he issued a provost’s commission to Jean Desbois, a man of Chambéry, then living at Geneva, and ‘formerly a tooth-drawer,’ say contemporary documents. This extemporised judge, vain of his functions, wished to begin the examination. ‘When the syndics, who are my judges, question me, I will answer them,’ said Berthelier, ‘but not you, who have no right to do so.’—‘I shall come again,’ said Desbois after this futile attempt, ‘and shall compel you to answer me then.’ The provost went and reported to the bishop the unsatisfactory commencement of his high functions. 266

The emotion was universal in Geneva. The friend of its liberties, the founder of the league Who touches one touches all , was about to pay with his life for his enthusiasm in the cause of independence. The bold spirits, who braved the papal tyrant, proposed that they should consider this act of the bishop’s as mere brigandage (which it was in fact), and that they should support the laws by rescuing Berthelier. But the magistrates preferred a more moderate course. The Great Council was hastily assembled, and at their order the syndics waited upon the bishop. ‘My lord,’ said they, ‘Berthelier has been acquitted according to law; and now he is arrested without accuser, and without a preliminary information. If he is innocent, let him be set at liberty; if he is guilty, let him be tried by us; do not permit an infringement of the franchises in your city.’—‘It is true there is no accuser,’ said the bishop, ‘but common rumour stands in his stead; there is no preliminary information, but the notoriety of the deed supplies its place; as for what judges it concerns, the injury having been committed against the prince, it is the business of his officers to prosecute.’ Having thus dragged the sheep into his den, the wolf would not let it go. 267

When they were informed of this denial of justice, the more energetic party protested loudly. They asked if there was any duty more sacred than to deliver innocence? Could the people see with indifference the rights which belonged to them from time immemorial trodden under foot by a prince who had sworn to defend them? The bishop and his creatures, fearing lest the storm should burst, resolved to put the rebel speedily out of the way. The proceedings did not last two days, as Bonivard writes; all was done in one (August 23) between six and seven in the morning and four in the afternoon. 268Berthelier saw what was preparing, but his calmness never failed him. He remembered that, according to the sages of antiquity, the voluntary sacrifice which men make of their lives, out of love for their fellow-countrymen, has a mysterious power to save them. Had this not been seen among the Greeks and the Romans? And among those very leaguers whom Berthelier had so loved, was it not by thrusting the lances of the enemy into his bosom that Arnold of Winkelried delivered Switzerland?... But if Berthelier desired to save Geneva, Geneva desired to save him. Good men, the friends of right and maintainers of the sworn franchises of the citizens, felt that the ancient laws of the State deserved more respect than the despotic will of a perjured and cruel prince. The castle where the liberator was confined (a private possession of the house of Savoy) had long since been put into a condition to resist surprise; but Champel, the usual place of execution, was at a little distance from the city; the moment when Berthelier was conducted there would be the favourable opportunity. He will hardly have taken a hundred steps beyond the bridge when the huguenots, rising like one man and issuing from every quarter, will rescue him from the executioners who are nothing but murderers before the laws of men and the justice of God.