ke the owner's
head.--In effect, on the following morning at four o'clock, there is a
new invasion, a new pillage, and, this time, the last one; the servants
escape under a fire of musketry, and M. de Gouy, at the request of the
villagers, whose vineyards are devastated, is obliged to quit that part
of the country.[3275]--There is no need to go through the whole file.
At Houdainville, at the house of M. de Saint-Maurice, at Nointel, on the
estate of the Duc de Bourbon, at Chantilly, on the estate of the Prince
de Conde, at the house of M. de Fitz-James, and elsewhere, a certain
Gauthier, "commandant of the Paris detachment of Searchers, and charged
with the powers of the Committee of Supervision," makes his patriotic
circuit, and Roland knows beforehand of what that consists, namely, a
dragonnade[3276] in regular form on the domains of all nobles, absent or
present.[3277]

Favorite game is still found in the clergy, more vigorously hunted than
the nobles; Roland, charged with the duty of maintaining public order,
asks himself how the lives of inoffensive priests, which the law
recommends to him, can be protected.--At Troyes, at the house of M.
Fardeau, an old non-conformist cure, an altar decked with its sacred
vessels is discovered, and M. Fardeau, arrested, refuses to take the
civic oath. Torn from his prison, and ordered to shout "Vive la Nation!"
he again refuses. On this, a volunteer, borrowing an ax from a baker,
chops off his head, and this head, washed in the river, is borne to
the Hotel-de-ville.[3278]--At Meaux, a brigade of Parisian gendarmerie
murders seven priests, and, as an extra, six ordinary malefactors in
confinement.[3279] At Rheims, the Parisian volunteers first make way
with the post-master and his clerk, both under suspicion because the
smell of burnt paper had issued from their chimney, and, next, M. de
Montrosier, an old retired officer, which is the opening of the hunt.
Afterwards they fall upon two ecclesiastics with pikes and sabers, whom
their game-beaters have brought in from the country, then on the former
cure of Saint-Jean, and on that of Rilly; their corpses are cut up,
paraded through the streets in portions, and burnt in a bonfire; one
of the wounded priests, the abbe Alexandre, is thrown in still
alive.[3280]--Roland recognizes the men of September, who, exposing
their still bloody pikes, came to his domicile to demand their wages;
wherever the band passes it announces, "in the name o