er the country to look for them,
and during their absence the mother and children were rescued by the
mounted patrol.

The exasperation of the Protestants rose higher and higher as reports of
these murders came in one by one, till at last the desire for vengeance
could no longer be repressed, and they were clamorously insisting on
being led against the ramparts and the towers, when without warning
a heavy fusillade began from the windows and the clock tower of the
Capuchin monastery. M. Massin, a municipal officer, was killed on the
spot, a sapper fatally wounded, and twenty-five of the National Guard
wounded more or less severely. The Protestants immediately rushed
towards the monastery in a disorderly mass; but the superior, instead
of ordering the gates to be opened, appeared at a window above the
entrance, and addressing the assailants as the vilest of the vile, asked
them what they wanted at the monastery. "We want to destroy it, we want
to pull it down till not one stone rests upon another," they replied.
Upon this, the reverend father ordered the alarm bells to be rung, and
from the mouths of bronze issued the call for help; but before it could
arrive, the door was burst in with hatchets, and five Capuchins and
several of the militia who wore the red tuft were killed, while all the
other occupants of the monastery ran away, taking refuge in the house
of a Protestant called Paulhan. During this attack the church was
respected; a man from Sornmieres, however, stole a pyx which he found in
the sacristy, but as soon as his comrades perceived this he was arrested
and sent to prison.

In the monastery itself, however, the doors were broken in, the
furniture smashed, the library and the dispensary wrecked. The sacristy
itself was not spared, its presses being broken into, its chests
destroyed, and two monstrances broken; but nothing further was touched.
The storehouses and the small cloth-factory connected with the monastery
remained intact, like the church.

But still the towers held out, and it was round them that the real
fighting took place, the resistance offered from within being all the
more obstinate that the besieged expected relief from moment to moment,
not knowing that their letters had been intercepted by the enemy. On
every side the rattling of shot was heard, from the Esplanade, from
the windows, from the roofs; but very little effect was produced by the
Protestants, for Descombiez had told his men to