ghter, "that, Captain, will teach you to play the gallant."

I have heard it said that the unhappy lady died shortly after of
chagrin.

The customary appeal followed; but, this time, there was little hope.
The Republican party, which Napoleon annihilated a month later, was in
the ascendency. That of the Counter-Revolution was compromised by its
odious excesses. The people demanded examples, and matters were arranged
accordingly, as is ordinarily the custom in strenuous times; for it is
with governments as with men, the weakest are always the most cruel. Nor
had the Companies of Jehu longer an organized existence. The heroes of
these ferocious bands, Debeauce, Hastier, Bary, Le Coq, Dabri, Delbourbe
and Storkenfeld, had either fallen on the scaffold or elsewhere. The
condemned could look for no further assistance from the daring courage
of these exhausted devotees, who, no longer capable of protecting their
own lives, coolly sacrificed them, as did Piard, after a merry supper.
Our brigands were doomed to die.

Their appeal was rejected, but the municipal authorities were not the
first to learn of this. The condemned men were warned by three shots
fired beneath the walls of their dungeon. The Commissioner of the
Executive Directory, who had assumed the role of Public Prosecutor at
the trial, alarmed at this obvious sign of connivance, requisitioned a
squad of armed men of whom my uncle was then commander. At six o'clock
in the morning sixty horsemen were drawn up before the iron gratings of
the prison yard.

Although the jailers had observed all possible precautions in entering
the dungeon where these four unfortunate men were confined, and whom
they had left the preceding day tightly pinioned and heavily loaded
with chains, they were unable to offer them a prolonged resistance.
The prisoners were free and armed to the teeth. They came forth without
difficulty, leaving their guardians under bolts and bars, and, supplied
with the keys, they quickly traversed the space that separated them
from the prison yard. Their appearance must have been terrifying to the
populace awaiting them before the iron gates.

To assure perfect freedom of action, or perhaps to affect an appearance
of security more menacing even than the renown for strength and
intrepidity with which their names were associated, or possibly even to
conceal the flow of blood which reveals itself so readily beneath white
linen, and betrays the last agonies of