Assizes Court of
La Drome, for having murdered five people, and was cast off by his own
faction. For some time his wife, who was infirm and deformed, might be
seen going from house to house asking alms for him, who had been for two
months the arbiter of civil war and assassination. Then came a day when
she ceased her quest, and was seen sitting, her head covered by a black
rag: Pointu was dead, but it was never known where or how. In some
corner, probably, in the crevice of a rock or in the heart of the
forest, like an old tiger whose talons have been clipped and his teeth
drawn.

Naudaud and Magnan were sentenced to the galleys for ten years. Naudaud
died there, but Magnan finished his time and then became a scavenger,
and, faithful to his vocation as a dealer of death, a poisoner of stray
dogs.

Some of these cut-throats are still living, and fill good positions,
wearing crosses and epaulets, and, rejoicing in their impunity, imagine
they have escaped the eye of God.

We shall wait and see!

CHAPTER IX

It was on Saturday that the white flag was hoisted at Nimes. The next
day a crowd of Catholic peasants from the environs marched into
the city, to await the arrival of the Royalist army from Beaucaire.
Excitement was at fever heat, the desire of revenge filled every breast,
the hereditary hatred which had slumbered during the Empire again awoke
stronger than ever. Here I may pause to say that in the account which
follows of the events which took place about this time, I can only
guarantee the facts and not the dates: I relate everything as it
happened; but the day on which it happened may sometimes have escaped my
memory, for it is easier to recollect a murder to which one has been an
eye-witness, than to recall the exact date on which it happened.

The garrison of Nimes was composed of one battalion of the 13th Regiment
of the line, and another battalion of the 79th Regiment, which not
being up to its full war-strength had been sent to Nimes to complete its
numbers by enlistment. But after the battle of Waterloo the citizens had
tried to induce the soldiers to desert, so that of the two battalions,
even counting the officers, only about two hundred men remained.

When the news of the proclamation of Napoleon II reached Nimes,
Brigadier-General Malmont, commandant of the department, had him
proclaimed in the city without any disturbance being caused thereby. It
was not until some days later that a report