of the Holy Spirit on the laity; and he is no less in error when, giving rein to violence, he permits the possessions presented to God to be turned from the use of the clergy and the poor. I am well aware that it is fair for the Church to contribute to the defence of the empire. What she ought to do she will do; beware, however, of seizing by violence what should in justice be a voluntary gift. Cease, sire, from contaminating religious matters with the world by giving Church benefices to your soldiers; be careful to separate religious and secular concerns, and to avert the despoiling of the Church, lest you bring upon you the curse of the holy fathers."

Wala concluded by proposing that a tax should be levied similar to the "none" of Charlemagne, or corresponding with the "gratuitous gifts" which were imposed on the clergy in times more nearly approaching our own. His efforts were fruitless. Like an innocent lamb, Louis allowed himself to be influenced and led by the wolves, who had gained his confidence, and were foremost in skill and violence amongst those who ruled him. Nothing could now prevent the nation from splitting into two factions. When this happens, neither party comprehends the language of the other; the voice of equity is lost, and he who dares to advocate it is repulsed alike by both factions. The emperor had had experience of this at the commencement of his reign when he had tried to act in the manner he was now advised to do. Wala's journey produced no good effects; he had only succeeded in exciting both clergy and nobles against him. The most inveterate amongst them accused him of inflaming the court, and of being the cause of all the ills under which the empire groaned. The ignorant multitude were ready to repeat these accusations, and, ere long, the very man who had once been lauded for his wisdom and justice was looked upon as a man of discord and a public enemy. There was nothing left to him but to return to Corbie and pour out his sorrow to the monks.

IV.

YET the course which events took brought the Abbot of Corbie once more before the political world. These events belong to general history. Every one knows of the marriage of Louis le Débonnaire with Judith of Bavaria, of the birth of a son, known under the name of Charles the Bald, and of the wars which the empress's ambition lighted between the father and his three sons by a former marriage. Louis was urged to secure a throne to the young Prince Charles, and to give him the very core of the empire, namely, the lands by the Rhine, which, from their position, commanded the whole kingdom of the Franks. These pretensions alarmed the kings of Italy, Germany, and Aquitaine. It was reported that Judith's ambition for her son went still further, and that she would not be satisfied until she had made him sole heir to his father. Other reports were current, the empress's virtue was doubted, and the legitimacy of Prince Charles questioned. They went so far as to suspect her of entertaining a plot for getting rid of the emperor, that she might espouse her paramour. These rumours were set about by mistrust, and were augmented by hatred.

The three princes, Lothaire, Louis, and Pepin, joined together, and rose

in arms to protect their rights. Abandoned by all, Louis le Débonnaire fell into their hands. They had gained an easy victory, but they could not agree together after their success, and in this dilemma they turned to Wala.

"Banish from the emperor's councils the men who deceive him," he replied; "banish the adulterous man and woman, and with them the crowd of soothsayers and diviners of dreams, and all who practise arts of iniquity. This done, give up the throne to your father; freed from their yoke, he will be, what he once was, the best of princes."

This advice was as little heeded as that which he had given to the emperor. The princes mistrusted their father no less than each other, and, in the mean time, the empire remained without a head. Disorder spread rapidly in all directions, and discontent broke out into open clamour. Public opinion suddenly changed. The throne was again in Louis's hands, and his sons prostrated at his feet. Wala was exiled to Chillon. The Empress Judith and her minister Bernard dictated the order to Louis, which consigned a man of austere religion, the friend of the King of Italy, and the enemy to their politics, to prison. Most of the emperor's councillors were likewise banished. They would have made them suffer a harder fate had not the kindness of Louis prevailed over their cruelty.

V.

THE country towards which the Abbot of Corbie was borne in no way resembled in the ninth century what it does at present. The chroniclers of the period speak of a distant country remote and shrouded in mists. Cultivation had not then softened the climate of Montreux; no towns and villages clustered along the shore; but few habitations were seen on the mountains of Lavaux. Wild plants grew luxuriantly on the rocks; hermits dwelt in the caverns of the mountains; the monks of Hauterêt had not cultivated the declivities of Désaley. Vevey was only a village of small importance. The memory of past revolutions of nature kept the inhabitants from establishing themselves on the immediate margin of the lake. The story of the disaster of Tauretunum was told with alarm, for the course of the Rhône had been suddenly interrupted, and breaking over its banks, and precipitating itself with fury into the lake, the river had washed away walls, villages, and towns along the shore.

There was only a chapel where now the village of Montreux stands, but some few habitations nestled on a ridge somewhat higher up the Alps. Large oaks and chesnuts descended to Lake Leman, where now vineyards are planted. Even the rich valley of the Rhône was sparely inhabited. The devastations of the Lombards and those of the nobles of the country had driven the farmers up to the higher Alpine valleys. Exchanging an agricultural life for a pastoral one, their tribes, of Celtic origin, began to spread out to the sources of the Torneresse and the cliffs of Saxiema, and met with the herds and flocks of German tribes which occupied Gruyère. Travellers rarely took the route through the valley of the Rhône to Italy, for the Simplon was not open, and the pass of St. Bernard was difficult and full of peril. As for the tower of Chillon, it was looked upon as a place of solitude, desolation, and fear.

This was not the impression the first sight of the gloomy tower made

upon the Abbot of Corbie. "Oh, beauty, ancient as the world, yet ever new!" cried St. Augustine, after having communed with himself, "I love you, and I know that I love you. Thou art light, voice, perfume, nutriment to me, which I taste in my innermost soul, where a light burns which has no boundary in space, where I attach myself to an object of infinite goodness without ever being satiated by the delights which the possession of it causes me."

Like St. Augustine, Wala believed in an eternal Word, which is in continual communication with the human soul, and his faith in God, the inexhaustible fountain of all consolation, preserved him from being cast down. Like another prisoner,* seven centuries later, he lived many years shut up within those walls. "He received no visitor," says his biographer, "save the angels, who know how to penetrate into the heart of an upright man wherever he may be."

One day, this same writer, Pascase Radbert, succeeded in passing the prison doors of Chillon. It may be that Louis had suddenly remembered the existence of Count Wala, or perhaps, by his persevering solicitations, Radbert had obtained permission to exchange a few words with his superior. However this may be, he appeared before Wala in his dungeon, and brought a kind message to him from the emperor. It will be best to give the account of this interview in his own words: "We were together one day," he said. "It was a day of happiness and of sorrow, for we shed many tears both of joy and bitterness. Why should we not have been happy? Our consciences were clear, and we were together. Why should we not have mourned? He, whom I loved, was in prison, and by reason of his very virtues; he was followed, too, by hatred and malice, and was passing his days in the rigours of a long captivity. We conversed together, and consoled and pained each other by turns.

"The emperor,' I said, 'wishes to set you free; he only requires you to confess that you were in the wrong, that you erred by an excess of zeal, and to promise that you will in future submit to his most gracious will. One word from you will ensure your pardon.'

"And this word,' he said, 'is it you who would encourage me to utter it? You, my friend, who know my opinions, do you doubt my rectitude? I thought that you had come to exhort me to persevere in the combat for justice, but I could never have imagined that you would seek to weaken my resolution, and to make me avow what honour would condemn.'

"No,' I replied, 'I have never doubted of your innocence. I only ask you to express your regret and to assent. Your friends are convinced that nothing more would be needed to place you not only at liberty, but in favour with the emperor, and in a position superior to any that you have yet occupied in the state. Once reinstated in the emperor's favour, you will be able to obtain anything you might like to ask for.'

but

"He smiled and said, in a tone of light irony, 'You think, then, that you have both the prince and those who govern him in your power; have you propitiated the tribunal of Heaven? How would the Supreme Judge regard it were I to bring a false sentence against myself—were I

• Bonivard.

to abandon the path of justice and truth? Might not the future turn out very differently to what you expect? In trying to fly from the dreariness of my present life, and loading my conscience with falsehood, might I not only be aggravating my dangers, and be exposing myself to a sentence of death? Would it not be so when I had condemned myself with my own mouth? Whatever my chances at the emperor's court, ought I, for the sake of escaping these transitory pains and regaining vain honours-ought I to expose myself to eternal death by the just decree of God? Would you be the man to counsel me to act thus? Believe me, my friend, we should do better to follow the path which the grace of God has pointed out to us, and to maintain our hearts firm in faith and hope, that we may hereafter enter into eternal life!'

"I was silent and abashed when I heard Wala speak thus. I plainly saw that, careless as to his own interests, his mind dwelt only on the objects of his ardent affection-God, his country, the Church, and the good of the people. I saw, too, that he had been actuated by the wish in all he had done to wipe away the stain from the imperial house by restoring the sons to their father, preserving unity, and by making the oaths respected which had been tendered to King Lothaire.

"During our conversation, the waves of Lake Leman were breaking against the walls of the prison. Wala gazed at the agitated waters. Accustomed to listen for God's voice in nature, as well as in his own heart, he heard the foaming waves speak to him of his Creator. Their ebb and flow spoke to him of human affairs, of the immovability of the rock upon which Chillon stood, and of the security of the man whom it had pleased God to place beyond the conflict of life. Impressed with these thoughts, a joyful expression beamed from his face, his brow was open, and he said to the excited water:

"Thus far shalt thou come, and against these walls shall thy proud waves be stayed.'

"Like the exile of Patmos, Saint John, the friend of Christ, he looked back on past events, penetrated the veil of futurity, and, nourished by the Divine mysteries, he seemed already to taste the joys of Heaven."

VI.

THE Abbot of Corbie remained at Chillon till the three sons of the emperor entered upon a campaign against their father. Lothaire was the first to rise, and Chillon was then deemed too near to Italy to be a safe retreat for a state prisoner. Count Wala was therefore removed from the walls which had become endeared to him by habit. He was hurried across France, and thrown into a prison recently erected on the island of Noirmoutiers, at the mouth of the Loire. He had scarcely arrived, when the armies of the King of Aquitaine hastened to attempt the liberation of the captive.

Wala was once more made to traverse the empire to the abbey of Fulde, in one of the most remote districts of Germany, but he was not long permitted to rest here. Louis of Bavaria, the emperor's third son, rose in arms, and the enemies of Wala, not knowing where to send him for safety, allowed him to return to the abbey of Corbie, on condition that he would lead the simple life of a monk, in submission to the rules of

the monastery. Here even Wala did not find that tranquillity, which he was destined not again to enjoy on earth. No sooner had he arrived than envoys waited on him from the Pope, the emperor's sons, and from some of the principal nobles. They knew what he had suffered, without any good resulting from his previous efforts, but they besought him not to abandon the sacred cause. Wala rejected their entreaties, but they told him that their orders had been to compel him to repair to Lothaire, should persuasion fail. The court began to fill with armed men, and the monks, not knowing what they intended to do, were petrified with fear. Then the delegates from the Pope threw themselves at Wala's feet, and conjured him by all he held most holy not to reject the petition of the father of the faithful, not to abandon King Lothaire, his friend, in his difficult position, and not to refuse him the support of his valuable counsels.

Wala was over-persuaded. "I submit," he said. "I will not be an example of disobedience to the commands of the Bishop of Rome." Accompanied by his faithful friend Radbert, he went with the envoys, and the journey was not unattended with peril. Armed men were flocking from all parts towards the Rhine, some to range themselves around the emperor, others around the princes. These streams encountered occasionally, and sometimes came to blows. All parties looked to the Pope as a mediator. Arrived on the shores of the Rhine, the Bishop of Rome, accompanied by a large body of ecclesiastics, amongst them Radbert, repaired to the Emperor Louis.

The heads of the Church were divided into two parties: one invoked, the other objected to the pontifical intervention. The first encouraged Louis to reject it, the others proclaimed the Pope as sovereign of sovereigns, the director of princes and nations. This language was remarkable in an age when the bishops of Rome had not yet taken the high position to which the necessity felt by the people for a protector against violence, and a judge in their differences, afterwards raised them. It marks an interesting point in the course of history. Gregory hesitated to accept the distinction which his successors have thought so inseparable from their position as Christ's representatives on earth.

It was not for the Pope on this occasion to unravel the knots tied by existing politics. Whilst he was carrying on his task of persuasion in the royal tent, the work was being accomplished by other hands than his. The camps of the contending factions approached each other. The soldiers, now opposed, had fought in the same ranks under Charlemagne, and they were drawn together, they ate and drank together, and exchanged friendly greetings as brothers in arms. It is said gold had been distributed amongst them; one thing is certain, the two camps amalgamated into one, and when Louis awoke from his dream of security, he found himself a prisoner in the hands of his sons. faithful friends alone remained near his person. I would have no one lose a limb, still less his life, for my sake." He followed them ere long, and threw himself upon the mercy of his sons.

66

A small number of Go," he said-" go.

History has narrated subsequent events. It has spoken of Louis's calmness, of his persevering refusal to abdicate the throne, of the return of popular feeling to his side, and of the divisions amongst his sons. Wala tried in vain to reconcile the contending factions. Society, plunged again into anarchy, seemed to represent one of those nocturnal scenes