upon the poor body, and, with that mixture of gayety and ferocity
peculiar to Southern people, the men began to dance on his stomach,
singing, while the women, that he might better expiate his
blasphemies against the Pope, cut or rather scalloped his lips
with their scissors.

And out of the midst of this frightful group came a cry, or rather
a groan; this death groan said: "In the name of Heaven! in the
name of the Virgin! in the name of humanity! kill me at once."

This cry was heard, and by common consent the assassins stood
aside. They left the unfortunate man bleeding, disfigured, mangled,
to taste of his death agony.

This lasted five hours, during which, amid shouts of laughter,
insults, and jeers from the crowd, this poor body lay palpitating
upon the steps of the altar. That is how they kill at Avignon.

Stay! there is yet another way. A man of the French party conceived
the idea of going to the Mont-de-Piete for information. Everything
was in order there, not a fork or a spoon had been removed. It was
therefore not as an accomplice of theft that Lescuyer had just been
so cruelly murdered, it was for being a patriot.

There was at that time in Avignon a man who controlled the populace.
All these terrible leaders of the Midi have acquired such fatal
celebrity that it suffices to name them for every one, even the
least educated, to know them. This man was Jourdan. Braggart and
liar, he had made the common people believe that it was he who had
cut off the head of the governor of the Bastille. So they called him