Jourdan, Coupe-tete. That was not his real name, which was Mathieu
Jouve. Neither was he a Provencal; he came from Puy-en-Velay. He had
formerly been a muleteer on those rugged heights which surround his
native town; then a soldier without going to war--war had perhaps
made him more human; after that he had kept a drink-shop in Paris.
In Avignon he had been a vendor of madder.

He collected three hundred men, carried the gates of the town,
left half of his troop to guard them, and with the remainder
marched upon the Church of the Cordeliers, preceded by two pieces
of cannon. These he stationed in front of the church and fired them
into it at random. The assassins fled like a flock of frightened
birds, leaving some few dead upon the church steps. Jourdan and
his men trampled over the bodies and entered the holy precincts.
No one was there but the Virgin, and the wretched Lescuyer, still
breathing. Jourdan and his comrades took good care not to despatch
Lescuyer; his death agony was a supreme means of exciting the mob.
They picked up this remnant of a sentient being, three-quarters
dead, and carried it along, bleeding, quivering, gasping, with
them.

Every one fled from the sight, closing doors and windows. At the
end of an hour, Jourdan and his three hundred men were masters
of the town.

Lescuyer was dead, but what of that; they no longer needed his
agony. Jourdan profited by the terror he had inspired to arrest
or have arrested eighty people, murderers, or so-called murderers
of Lescuyer. Thirty, perhaps, had never even set foot within the
church. But when one has such a good opportunity to be rid of