ing, 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 began to be circulated that a
royal army was gathering at Beaucaire, and that the populace would take
advantage of its arrival to indulge in excesses. In the face of this
two-fold danger, General Malmont had ordered the regular troops, and a
part of the National Guard of the Hundred Days, to be drawn up under arms
in the rear of the bar