hem both, shot an
arquebusier with his own hand, and beat the troop off before the help
for which he managed to send had had time to arrive. Nor was he
without friends who were quite worthy of their company.

In the year before de Fontenay himself enjoyed the Privilege de St.
Romain, it had been extended, at the express wish of several members
of the royal family, to four sons of the Baron d'Aunay, the Duke of
Orleans being especially urgent in pointing out that these poor
fellows had done nothing in his opinion that should debar them from
the privilege. They were, as a matter of fact, merely charged with the
following peccadilloes, among others. In the course of rescuing a
friend from the Communal authorities at Saint-Avon, they used the
town-folk so roughly that a man and a woman fell into a well during
the dispute, and were drowned. On their way to the wars they met a man
with his wife upon the bridge near their home, and annoyed at not
having enough room left for their horses, they dismounted, tied up the
man's hands and feet, and beat the woman cruelly before her husband's
eyes. On the death of their grandmother, who had married twice, they
visited her second husband to get possession of certain legal papers,
and when he resisted they ran him through the stomach with a rapier.
Enlisted for once upon the side of justice, they were clamouring at a
house for the surrender of a murderer who had taken refuge there, and
when the owner opened the door they killed him with a slash across the
body. Pursued themselves by the officers, they waited till they were
on their own land, then turned and charged the men, sword in hand,
secured their horses, and thrashed one of them with knotted thorns.
Before they were finally taken by the sergeants of Rouen they had
thrown themselves into the church of Aulnay and defended it against
forty armed men, wounding several of them with crossbow-bolts before
they surrendered.

Our friend Francois de Fontenay was acquainted with this gallant band
of brothers through the house of Creance, with which both were
connected; and their sturdy resistance to the law of the land must
have soon created a strong feeling of sympathy and admiration; for the
five men are found all joined together to accomplish the murder of one
Boullart near Caen. Wherever de Fontenay went it soon became the
fashion among the villages to oppose his progress; but this made
little difference, for both at Neufbourg and at F