e
next house; but Guy-Rochette and his companions valiantly resolved
not to run away, but to await their fate with patience. The gates soon
yielded, and the courtyard and palace were filled with Protestants: at
their head appeared Captain Bouillargues, sword in hand. Guy-Rochette
and those with him were seized and secured in a room under the charge
of four guards, and the palace was looted. Meantime another band of
insurgents had attacked the house of the vicar-general, John Pebereau,
whose body pierced by seven stabs of a dagger was thrown out of a
window, the same fate as was meted out to Admiral Coligny eight years
later at the hands of the Catholics. In the house a sum of 800
crowns was found and taken. The two bands then uniting, rushed to the
cathedral, which they sacked for the second time.

Thus the entire day passed in murder and pillage: when night came the
large number of prisoners so imprudently taken began to be felt as an
encumbrance by the insurgent chiefs, who therefore resolved to take
advantage of the darkness to get rid of them without causing too much
excitement in the city. They were therefore gathered together from the
various houses in which they had been confined, and were brought to a
large hall in the Hotel de Ville, capable of containing from four to
five hundred persons, and which was soon full. An irregular tribunal
arrogating to itself powers of life and death was formed, and a clerk
was appointed to register its decrees. A list of all the prisoners was
given him, a cross placed before a name indicating that its bearer
was condemned to death, and, list in hand, he went from group to group
calling out the names distinguished by the fatal sign. Those thus sorted
out were then conducted to a spot which had been chosen beforehand as
the place of execution.

This was the palace courtyard in the middle of which yawned a well
twenty-four feet in circumference and fifty deep. The fanatics thus
found a grave ready-digged as it were to their hand, and to save time,
made use of it.

The unfortunate Catholics, led thither in groups, were either stabbed
with daggers or mutilated with axes, and the bodies thrown down the
well. Guy-Rochette was one of the first to be dragged up. For himself he
asked neither mercy nor favour, but he begged that the life of his young
brother might be spared, whose only crime was the bond of blood which
united them; but the assassins, paying no heed to his prayers, struck