so readily beneath white linen, and betrays the last agonies of
a mortally wounded man, their breasts were bared. Their braces
crossed upon the chest--their wide red belts bristling with
arms--their cry of attack and rage, all that must have given a
decidedly fantastic touch to the scene. Arrived in the square,
they perceived the gendarmerie drawn up in motionless ranks,
through which it would have been impossible to force a passage.
They halted an instant and seemed to consult together. Lepretre,
who was, as I have said, their senior and their chief, saluted
the guard with his hand, saying with that noble grace of manner
peculiar to him:

"Very well, gentlemen of the gendarmerie!"

Then after a brief, energetic farewell to his comrades, he stepped
in front of them and blew out his brains. Guyon, Amiet and Hyvert
assumed a defensive position, their double-barrelled pistols
levelled upon their armed opponents. They did not fire; but the
latter, considering this demonstration as a sign of open hostility,
fired upon them. Guyon fell dead upon Lepretre's body, which had
not moved. Amiet's hip was broken near the groin. The "Biographie
des Contemporains" says that he was executed. I have often heard
it said that he died at the foot of the scaffold. Hyvert was
left alone, his determined brow, his terrible eye, the pistol
in each practiced and vigorous hand threatening death to the
spectators. Perhaps it was involuntary admiration, in his desperate
plight, for this handsome young man with his waving locks, who
was known never to have shed blood, and from whom the law now
demanded the expiation of blood; or perhaps it was the sight of
those three corpses over which he sprang like a wolf overtaken