mouth to mouth, the harbingers of death. Once
more the infamous slander which a hundred times had been proved to be
false, raised its voice with dogged persistence, asserting that Brune,
who did not arrive at Paris until the 5th of September, 1792, had on the
2nd, when still at Lyons, carried the head of the Princesse de Lamballe
impaled on a pike. Soon the news came that the marshal had just escaped
assassination at Aix, indeed he owed his safety to the fleetness of
his horses. Pointu, Forges, and Roquefort swore that they would manage
things better at Avignon.

By the route which the marshal had chosen there were only two ways open
by which he could reach Lyons: he must either pass through Avignon, or
avoid it by taking a cross-road, which branched off the Pointet highway,
two leagues outside the town. The assassins thought he would take the
latter course, and on the 2nd of August, the day on which the marshal
was expected, Pointu, Magnan, and Naudaud, with four of their creatures,
took a carriage at six o'clock in the morning, and, setting out from the
Rhone bridge, hid themselves by the side of the high road to Pointet.

When the marshal reached the point where the road divided, having been
warned of the hostile feelings so rife in Avignon, he decided to take
the cross-road upon which Pointu and his men were awaiting him; but the
postillion obstinately refused to drive in this direction, saying that
he always changed horses at Avignon, and not at Pointet. One of the
marshal's aides-de-camp tried, pistol in hand, to force him to obey;
but the marshal would permit no violence to be offered him, and gave him
orders to go on to Avignon.

The marshal reached the town at nine o'clock in the morning, and
alighted at the Hotel du Palais Royal, which was also the post-house.
While fresh horses were being put to and the passports and safe-conduct
examined at the Loulle gate, the marshal entered the hotel to take a
plate of soup. In less than five minutes a crowd gathered round the
door, and M. Moulin the proprietor noticing the sinister and threatening
expression many of the faces bore, went to the marshal's room and urged
him to leave instantly without waiting for his papers, pledging his word
that he would send a man on horseback after him, who would overtake him
two or three leagues beyond the town, and bring him his own safe-conduct
and the passports of his aides-de-camp. The marshal came downstairs, and
finding the hor