ractically ruled the city now.
Denunciations were the order of the day. Everyone who owned any money,
or lived with any comfort was accused of being a traitor and suspected
of conspiracy. The fisher folk wandered about the city, surly and
discontented: their trade was at a standstill, but there was a trifle
to be earned by giving information: information which meant the arrest,
ofttimes the death of men, women and even children who had tried to seek
safety in flight, and to denounce whom--as they were trying to hire a
boat anywhere along the coast--meant a good square meal for a starving
family.

Then came the awful cataclysm.

A woman--a stranger--had been arrested and imprisoned in the Fort Gayole
and the town-crier publicly proclaimed that if she escaped from jail,
one member of every family in the town--rich or poor, republican or
royalist, Catholic or free-thinker--would be summarily guillotined.

That member, the bread-winner!

"Why, then, with the Duvals it would be young Francois-Auguste. He keeps
his old mother with his boot-making..."

"And it would be Marie Lebon, she has her blind father dependent on her
net-mending."

"And old Mother Laferriere, whose grandchildren were left penniless...
she keeps them from starvation by her wash-tub."

"But Francois-Auguste is a real Republican; he belongs to the Jacobin
Club."

"And look at Pierre, who never meets a calotin but he must needs spit on
him."

"Is there no safety anywhere?... are we to be butchered like so many
cattle?..."

Somebody makes the suggestion:

"It is a threat... they would not dare!..."

"Would not dare?..."

'Tis old Andre Lemoine who has spoken, and he spits vigorously on the
ground. Andre Lemoine has been a soldier; he was in La Vendee. He was
wounded at Tours... and he knows!

"Would not dare?..." he says in a whisper. "I tell you, friends, that
there's nothing the present government would not dare. There was the
Plaine Saint Mauve... Did you ever hear about that?... little children
fusilladed by the score... little ones, I say, and women with babies at
their breasts ... weren't they innocent?... Five hundred innocent people
butchered in La Vendee... until the Headsman sank--worn not... I could
tell worse than that... for I know.... There's nothing they would not
dare!..."

Consternation was so great that the matter could not even be discussed.

"We'll go to Gayole and see this woman at any rate."

Angry, sullen crowds