remain awake and watch for an opportunity to make our escape. Very soon afterward these half-intoxicated men lay down on the floor before the fire in the adjoining hall-way or vestibule and fell into a sound sleep. Our guide then confessed to us that, while at work in the stable, he had heard them planning to waylay us on the highway at an early hour of the following day. As soon, therefore, as we heard them all snoring lustily we very quietly slipped out of the house. Our score having already been paid earlier in the evening, and our horses having been left saddled and bridled in the stable, we mounted and took our departure by a road which led at first in a direction different from that in which we were supposed to be traveling. We experienced no further trouble on this part of our journey and in due time reached Lausanne. When we told the people at the inn about our experience at Mézières they replied that we might consider ourselves most fortunate, as almost every day there occurred, in the forest through which we had passed (la Forêt du Jorat), a murder or some other deed of violence.[1] It was plain, therefore, that we had had a narrow escape from death.
In the further course of our journey along the north shore of the lake we reached the city of Geneva on Oct. 15th. When I called upon John Calvin, to whom my father had given me a letter of introduction, he said to me: "My Felix, you arrive at the right moment, for I am now able to give you an excellent traveling companion for the remainder of your journey—to wit, Dr. Michel Heronard, a native of Montpellier." This Dr. Heronard, as I learned subsequently, was a Protestant who played a prominent part in the religious disorders which, a few years later, greatly disturbed the peace of that city
On the 30th of October—just twenty days after we set out from Basel—we entered the city of Montpellier, and I lost no time in hunting up Laurent Catalan, the apothecary, at whose house I expected to reside during my stay in that city.
Platter had now, after a long and dangerous journey,
reached one of the three greatest medical schools of that
- ↑ Some weeks later our fellow voyager, Thomas Schoepfius, wrote to me that, on the return journey, he learned at Berne that "Long Peter," the leader of the Mézières robbers, had been apprehended by the authorities and executed for his crimes; and that, when stretched on the rack, he had confessed, among other things, that he had tried to murder and rob some students who passed through Mézières on their way to Lausanne.
