red together in the square of the
Esplanade, where they were joined by the patriots from the adjacent towns
and villages, who came in in small parties till they formed quite an
army. At five A.M. M. de St. Pons, knowing that the windows of the
Capuchin monastery commanded the position taken up by the patriots, went
there with a company and searched the house thoroughly, and also the
Amphitheatre, but found nothing suspicious in either.

Immediately after, news was heard of the massacres that had taken place
during the night.

The country-house belonging to M. and Mme. Noguies had been broken into,
the furniture destroyed, the owners killed in their beds, and an old man
of seventy who lived with them cut to pieces with a scythe.

A young fellow of fifteen, named Payre, in passing near the guard placed
at the Pont des files, had been asked by a red-tuft if he were Catholic
or Protestant. On his replying he was Protestant, he was shot dead on
the spot. "That was like killing a lamb," said a comrade to the
murderer. "Pooh!" said he, "I have taken a vow to kill four Protestants,
and he may pass for one."

M. Maigre, an old man of eighty-two, head of one of the most respected
families in the neighbourhood, tried to escape from his house along with
his son, his daughter-in-law, two grandchildren, and two servants; but
the carriage was stopped, and while the rebels were murdering him and his
son, the mother and her two children succeeded in escaping to an inn,
whither the assassins pursued them, Fortunately, however, the two
fugitives having a start, reached the inn a few minutes before their
pursuers, and the innkeeper had enough presence of mind to conceal them
and open the garden gate by which he said they had escaped. The
Catholics, believing him, scattered over the country to look for them,
and during their absence the mother and children were rescued by the
mounted patrol.

The exasperation of the Protestants rose higher and higher as reports of
these murders came in one by one, till at last the desire for vengeance
could no longer be repressed, and they were clamorously insisting on
being led against the ramparts and the towers, when without warning a
heavy fusillade began from the windows and the clock tower of the
Capuchin monastery. M. Massin, a municipal officer, was killed on the
spot, a sapper fatally wounded, and twenty-five of the National Guard
wounded more or less severely. The Protestants immediat