“‘I cannot say,’ I observed, ’whether there is any foundation for the reassuring tidings we have heard, but of one thing you may be sure:  it is now seven o’clock in the morning, you can get to Marseilles in an hour, pack your trunks in another hour, and return in a third; let us allow one hour more for unforeseen delays.  If you are not back by eleven o’clock, I shall believe something has happened, and take steps accordingly.’  ’Very well,’ said my wife; ’if I am not back by then, you may think me dead, and do whatever you think best.’  And so she and her mother left me.

“An hour later, quite different news came to hand.  Fugitives, seeking like ourselves safety in the country, told us that the rioting, far from ceasing, had increased; the streets were encumbered with corpses, and two people had been murdered with unheard-of cruelty.

“An old man named Bessieres, who had led a simple and blameless life, and whose only crime was that he had served under the Usurper, anticipating that under existing circumstances this would be regarded as a capital crime, made his will, which was afterwards found among his papers.  It began with the following words: 

“’As it is possible that during this revolution I may meet my death, as a partisan of Napoleon, although I have never loved him, I give and bequeath, etc., etc.

“The day before, his brother-in-law, knowing he had private enemies, had come to the house and spent the night trying to induce him to flee, but all in vain.  But the next morning, his house being attacked, he yielded, and tried to escape by the back door.  He was stopped by some of the National Guard, and placed himself under their protection.

“They took him to the Cours St. Louis, where, being hustled by the crowd and very ineffectually defended by the Guards, he tried to enter the Cafe Mercantier, but the door was shut in his face.  Being broken by fatigue, breathless, and covered with dust and sweat, he threw himself on one of the benches placed against the wall, outside the house.  Here he was wounded by a musket bullet, but not killed.  At the sight of his blood shrieks of joy were heard, and then a young man with a pistol in each hand forced his way through the throng and killed the old man by two shots fired point blank in his face.

“Another still more atrocious murder took place in the course of the same morning.  A father and son, bound back to back, were delivered over to the tender mercies of the mob.  Stoned and beaten and covered with each other’s blood, for two long hours their death-agony endured, and all the while those who could not get near enough to strike were dancing round them.

“Our time passed listening to such stories; suddenly I saw a friend running towards the house.  I went to meet him.  He was so pale that I hardly dared to question him.  He came from the city, and had been at my house to see what had become of me.  There was no one in it, but across the door lay two corpses wrapped in a blood-stained sheet which he had not dared to lift.