condemned could look for no further assistance from the daring
courage of these exhausted devotees, who, no longer capable of
protecting their own lives, coolly sacrificed them, as did Piard,
after a merry supper. Our brigands were doomed to die.

Their appeal was rejected, but the municipal authorities were
not the first to learn of this. The condemned men were warned
by three shots fired beneath the walls of their dungeon. The
Commissioner of the Executive Directory, who had assumed the
role of Public Prosecutor at the trial, alarmed at this obvious
sign of connivance, requisitioned a squad of armed men of whom
my uncle was then commander. At six o'clock in the morning sixty
horsemen were drawn up before the iron gratings of the prison
yard.

Although the jailers had observed all possible precautions in
entering the dungeon where these four unfortunate men were confined,
and whom they had left the preceding day tightly pinioned and
heavily loaded with chains, they were unable to offer them a
prolonged resistance. The prisoners were free and armed to the
teeth. They came forth without difficulty, leaving their guardians
under bolts and bars, and, supplied with the keys, they quickly
traversed the space that separated them from the prison yard.
Their appearance must have been terrifying to the populace awaiting
them before the iron gates.

To assure perfect freedom of action, or perhaps to affect an
appearance of security more menacing even than the renown for
strength and intrepidity with which their names were associated,
or possibly even to conceal the flow of blood which reveals itself