with him; but Vernet let his fist fall three times, and three men rolled at his feet like bulls struck by a club.  The others withdrew.  A dozen champions such as Vernet would have saved the marshal.  Yet it must not be forgotten that this man was a Royalist, and held the same opinions as those against whom he fought; for him as for them the marshal was a mortal enemy, but he had a noble heart, and if the marshal were guilty he desired a trial and not a murder.  Meantime a certain onlooker had heard what had been said to M. de Chamans about his unofficial costume, and had gone to put on his uniform.  This was M. de Puy, a handsome and venerable old man, with white hair, pleasant expression, and winning voice.  He soon came back in his mayor’s robes, wearing his scarf and his double cross of St. Louis and the Legion of Honour.  But neither his age nor his dignity made the slightest impression on these people; they did not even allow him to get back to the hotel door, but knocked him down and trampled him under foot, so that he hardly escaped with torn clothes and his white hair covered with dust and blood.  The fury of the mob had now reached its height.

At this juncture the garrison of Avignon came in sight; it was composed of four hundred volunteers, who formed a battalion known as the Royal Angouleme.  It was commanded by a man who had assumed the title of Lieutenant-General of the Emancipating Army of Vaucluse.  These forces drew up under the windows of the “Palais Royal.”  They were composed almost entirely of Provenceaux, and spoke the same dialect as the people of the lower orders.  The crowd asked the soldiers for what they had come, why they did not leave them to accomplish an act of justice in peace, and if they intended to interfere.  “Quite the contrary,” said one of the soldiers; “pitch him out of the window, and we will catch him on the points of our bayonets.”  Brutal cries of joy greeted this answer, succeeded by a short silence, but it was easy to see that under the apparent calm the crowd was in a state of eager expectation.  Soon new shouts were heard, but this time from the interior of the hotel; a small band of men led by Forges and Roquefort had separated themselves from the throng, and by the help of ladders had scaled the walls and got on the roof of the house, and, gliding down the other side, had dropped into the balcony outside the windows of the rooms where the marshal was writing.

Some of these dashed through the windows without waiting to open them, others rushed in at the open door.  The marshal, thus taken by surprise, rose, and not wishing that the letter he was writing to the Austrian commandant to claim his protection should fall into the hands of these wretches, he tore it to pieces.  Then a man who belonged to a better class than the others, and who wears to-day the Cross of the Legion of Honour, granted to him perhaps for his conduct on this occasion, advanced towards the marshal, sword in hand, and told him if he had any last arrangements to make, he should make them at once, for he had only ten minutes to live.