Rise and Establishment of Protestantism at Geneva - James Aitken Wylie

Chapter 2
Genevese Martyrs of Liberty
BEFORE the day of Geneva's greatness should
have arrived, many of its heroic defenders would
be resting in the grave, the road thither for nearly
all of them being by the scaffold. Let us recount the
fate of the more prominent; and, first of all, of
Berthelier. One morning, as he was going to
breathe the fresh air outside the walls in his
favouite meadow, bathed by the waters of the
Rhone, he was arrested by the duke's soldiers.[1]
He bore himself with calmness and dignity both at
his arrest and during the few days now left him of
life. He wrote on the walls of his prison a verse of
Scripture, which permits us to hope that he had cast
anchor in another world than that which he was so
soon to leave. His head fell by the hand of the
executioner at the foot of Caesar's Tower, in the
isle in the Leman, near the point where the Rhone
issues from the lake.[2] His fellow-citizens beheld
him die, but could not save him. The cruel deed but
deepened their purpose of vengeance. The head of
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