conical towers, is silently pictured in the still waters.
It has been a day of a thousand. We took a boat, with two oarsmen, and
passed leisurely along the shores, under the cool, drooping branches of
trees, to the castle, which is scarce a stone's throw from the hotel. We
rowed along, close under the walls, to the ancient moat and drawbridge.
There I picked a bunch of blue bells, "les clochettes," which were
hanging their aerial pendants from every crevice--some blue, some
white....

We rowed along, almost touching the castle rock, where the wall ascends
perpendicularly, and the water is said to be a thousand feet deep. We
passed the loopholes that illuminate the dungeon vaults, and an old
arch, now walled up, where prisoners, after having been strangled, were
thrown into the lake.

Last evening we walked through the castle. An interesting Swiss woman,
who has taught herself English for the benefit of her visitors, was our
"cicerone." She seemed to have all the old Swiss vivacity of attachment
for "liberte et patrie." She took us first into the dungeon, with the
seven pillars, described by Byron. There was the pillar to which, for
protecting the liberty of Geneva, Bonivard was chained. There the Duke
of Savoy kept him for six years, confined by a chain four feet long. He
could take only three steps, and the stone floor is deeply worn by the
prints of those weary steps. Six years is so easily said; but to live
them, alone, helpless, a man burning with all the fires of manhood,
chained to that pillar of stone, and those three unvarying steps! Two
thousand one hundred and ninety days rose and set the sun, while seed
time and harvest, winter and summer, and the whole living world went
on over his grave. For him no sun, no moon, no stars, no business, no
friendship, no plans--nothing! The great millstone of life emptily
grinding itself away!

What a power of vitality was there in Bonivard, that he did not sink in
lethargy, and forget himself to stone! But he did not; it is said that
when the victorious Swiss army broke in to liberate him, they cried,

"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 jaile