chilled by a fine
October rain. It would be difficult to turn them into assassins.

Pooh! Is anything too difficult for the devil?

There comes an hour in such crises when God seems to abandon the earth.
Then the devil's chance comes.

The devil in person entered this cold, muddy courtyard. Assuming the
features, form and face of an apothecary of the neighborhood named
Mendes, he prepared a table lighted by two lanterns, on which he placed
glasses, jugs, pitchers and bottles.

What infernal beverage did these mysterious and curiously formed
receptacles contain? No one ever knew, but the result is well known.
All those who drank that diabolical liquor were suddenly seized with a
feverish rage, a lust of blood and murder. From that moment it was only
necessary to show them the door; they hurtled madly into the dungeon.

The massacre lasted all night; all night the cries, the sobs, the
groans of the dying sounded through the darkness. All were killed, all
slaughtered, men and women. It was long in doing; the killers, we have
said, were drunk and poorly armed. But they succeeded.

Among these butchers was a child remarked for his bestial cruelty, his
immoderate thirst for blood. It was Lescuyer's son. He killed and then
killed again; he boasted of having with his childish hand alone killed
ten men and four women.

"It's all right! I can kill as I like," said he. "I am not yet fifteen,
so they can do nothing to me for it."

As the killing progressed, they threw their victims, the living, dead
and wounded, into the Trouillas Tower, some sixty feet, down into the
pit. The men were thrown in first, and the women later. The assassins
wanted time to violate the bodies of those who were young and pretty. At
nine in the morning, after twelve hours of massacre, a voice was still
heard crying from the depths of the sepulchre:

"For pity's sake, come kill me! I cannot die."

A man, the armorer Bouffier, bent over the pit and looked down. The
others did not dare.

"Who was that crying?" they asked.

"That was Lami," replied Bouffier. Then, when he had returned, they
asked him:

"Well, what did you see at the bottom?"

"A queer marmalade," said he. "Men and women, priests and pretty girls,
all helter-skelter. It's enough to make one die of laughter."

"Decidedly man is a vile creature," said the Count of Monte-Cristo to M.
de Villefort.

Well, it is in this town, still reeking with blood, still warm, still
stirred b