When they wished to make some one spend the night under arms and in mortal terror, they wrote an anonymous letter telling him that he was about to be robbed; then they stole softly, one by one, round the walls of his house, or under his windows, whistling as if to call each other.

One of their famous performances, which long amused the town, where in fact it is still related, was to write a letter to all the heirs of a miserly old lady who was likely to leave a large property, announcing her death, and requesting them to be promptly on hand when the seals were affixed.  Eighty persons arrived from Vatan, Saint-Florent, Vierzon and the neighboring country, all in deep mourning,—­widows with sons, children with their fathers, some in carrioles, some in wicker gigs, others in dilapidated carts.  Imagine the scene between the old woman’s servants and the first arrivals! and the consultations among the notaries!  It created a sort of riot in Issoudun.

At last, one day the sub-prefect woke up to a sense that this state of things was all the more intolerable because it seemed impossible to find out who was at the bottom of it.  Suspicion fell on several young men; but as the National Guard was a mere name in Issoudun, and there was no garrison, and the lieutenant of police had only eight gendarmes under him, so that there were no patrols, it was impossible to get any proof against them.  The sub-prefect was immediately posted in the “order of the night,” and considered thenceforth fair game.  This functionary made a practice of breakfasting on two fresh eggs.  He kept chickens in his yard, and added to his mania for eating fresh eggs that of boiling them himself.  Neither his wife nor his servant, in fact no one, according to him, knew how to boil an egg properly; he did it watch in hand, and boasted that he carried off the palm of egg-boiling from all the world.  For two years he had boiled his eggs with a success which earned him many witticisms.  But now, every night for a whole month, the eggs were taken from his hen-house, and hard-boiled eggs substituted.  The sub-prefect was at his wits’ end, and lost his reputation as the “sous-prefet a l’oeuf.”  Finally he was forced to breakfast on other things.  Yet he never suspected the Knights of Idleness, whose trick had been cautiously played.  After this, Max managed to grease the sub-prefect’s stoves every night with an oil which sent forth so fetid a smell that it was impossible for any one to stay in the house.  Even that was not enough; his wife, going to mass one morning, found her shawl glued together on the inside with some tenacious substance, so that she was obliged to go without it.  The sub-prefect finally asked for another appointment.  The cowardly submissiveness of this officer had much to do with firmly establishing the weird and comic authority of the Knights of Idleness.