in one of the law-courts. It had a clerk named Raphel; a president,
half Italian, half French; an orator in the popular dialect named
Barbe Savournin de la Roua, and three or four other poor devils,
a baker, a pork butcher--their names are lost in the multitude
of events.

These were the men who cried: "We must kill all! If one only escapes
he will be a witness against us."

But, as we have said, executioners were wanting. There were barely
twenty men at hand in the courtyard, all belonging to the petty
tradesfolk of Avignon--a barber, a shoemaker, a cobbler, a mason,
and an upholsterer--all insufficiently armed at random, the one
with a sabre, the other with a bayonet, a third with an iron
bar, and a fourth with a bit of wood hardened by fire. All of
these people were chilled by a fine October rain. It would be
difficult to turn them into assassins.

Pooh! Is anything too difficult for the devil?

There comes an hour in such crises when God seems to abandon the
earth. Then the devil's chance comes.

The devil in person entered this cold, muddy courtyard. Assuming
the features, form and face of an apothecary of the neighborhood
named Mendes, he prepared a table lighted by two lanterns, on
which he placed glasses, jugs, pitchers and bottles.

What infernal beverage did these mysterious and curiously formed
receptacles contain? No one ever knew, but the result is well