few days in Arles. He reached the city on the
fourteenth, and, after visiting Dolores, left for home on the morning of
the sixteenth.

He made the journey on foot. The sky was slightly veiled by fleecy,
white clouds that tempered the heat of the sun. The road between Arles
and Nimes is charming, and Coursegol walked blithely along, inhaling
with delight the fresh morning breeze that came to him laden with the
vivifying fragrance of the olive and cypress. As he approached
Beaucaire, a pretty village on the bank of the Rhone, he noticed that an
unusual animation pervaded the place. Groups of peasants stood here and
there, engaged in excited conversation; every face wore an expression of
anxiety. He thought at first that these people must be going or
returning from some funeral; but he soon noticed that many were armed,
some with guns, some with scythes. On reaching the centre of the town,
he found the market-place full of soldiers; officers were giving excited
orders. It looked as if the town were arming to defend itself.

"What does all this mean?" inquired Coursegol, addressing a little group
of townspeople.

"Why, do you not know what has happened?" one man replied, in evident
astonishment.

"I have heard nothing. I have just arrived from Arles."

"Nimes has been pillaged. The peasantry from the Cevennes have descended
upon the city and massacred three hundred people--laborers, bourgeois,
priests and nuns. They are now masters of the place, and it is feared
that a detachment of them is coming in this direction. We are making
ready to receive them."

"What! Have they advanced beyond Nimes?" inquired Coursegol, appalled by
this news.

"Some of them advanced last night as far as the Pont du Gard. There
they sacked and burned the Chateau de Chamondrin!"

A ghastly pallor overspread Coursegol's features; he uttered a cry of
horror.

"What is the matter?" asked the man who had just apprised him of this
terrible calamity.

"My masters!--where are my masters?" cried poor Coursegol.

Then, without waiting for the response which no one could give, he
darted off like a madman in the direction of the Pont du Gard.

Although the events that took place in Nimes early in 1790 have never
been clearly explained by an impartial historian, we have reason to
suppose that the public sentiment prevailing there at the time was
unfavorable to the Revolution. The Catholics of the south became
indignant when they learned that t