in the dark during such a storm, and would die of fright if left
alone at the farm. The men, ashamed to desert their companion, who was
related to one of them, yielded to her entreaties and remained, hoping
that the storm would be a sufficient excuse for the delay. As soon as it
was light, the five resumed their journey. But the news of their crime
had reached the ears of Laplace before they got back. They were
arrested, and all their excuses were of no avail. Laplace ordered the
men to be taken outside the town and shot. The young girl was condemned
to be hanged; and the sentence was to be carried out that very day, but
some nuns who had been sent for to prepare her for death, having vainly
begged Laplace to show mercy, entreated the girl to declare that she
would soon become a mother. She indignantly refused to save her life at
the cost of her good name, so the nuns took the lie on themselves and
made the necessary declaration before the captain, begging him if he had
no pity for the mother to spare the child at least, by granting a
reprieve till it should be born. The captain was not for a moment
deceived, but he sent for a midwife and ordered her to examine the young
girl. At the end of half an hour she declared that the assertion of the
nuns was true.

"Very well," said the captain: "let them both be kept in prison for three
months; if by the end of that time the truth of this assertion is not
self-evident, both shall be hanged." When this decision was made known
to the poor woman, she was overcome by fear, and asked to see the,
captain again, to whom she confessed that, led away by the entreaties of
the nuns, she had told a lie.

Upon this, the woman was sentenced to be publicly whipped, and the young
girl hanged on a gibbet round which were placed the corpses of the four
men of whose death she was the cause.

As may easily be supposed, the "Cadets of the Cross" vied with both
Catholics and Protestants in the work of destruction. One of their bands
devoted itself to destroying everything belonging to the new converts
from Beaucaire to Nimes. They killed a woman and two children at
Campuget, an old man of eighty at a farm near Bouillargues, several
persons at Cicure, a young girl at Caissargues, a gardener at Nimes, and
many other persons, besides carrying off all the flocks, furniture, and
other property they could lay hands on, and burning down the farmhouses
of Clairan, Loubes, Marine, Carlot, Camp