The corporal looked round towards the barracks, as he felt that it was possible that he might want more assistance, and he saw that a body of men under arms was standing immediately in front of the building, and that a couple of the officers were with them.  The corporal saw at a glance that they were ready for immediate action, if their services should be requisite.  In fact, the colonel of the detachment well knew the feeling in the place with reference to the levies of the conscription.  He was sure, from the fact of not a single man having attended at the barracks, as directed, that there existed some general determination to resist the demands of the Convention, and he had consequently closely watched the proceedings of the corporal.

“Take your answer, Mr Corporal,” said Cathelineau:  “had Peter Berrier intended to have joined you. he would not have troubled you to come across the square to fetch him.  In one word, he will not go with you; if as you say, you intend to drag him across the market-place, you will find that you have enough to do.  Peter Berrier has many friends in St. Florent.”

The corporal again looked round, and he saw that the men under arms now stretched from the front of the barracks, nearly into the square; but he also saw that the inhabitants of the town were standing clustering at all the doors, and that men were crowding towards the square from the different inlets.  Four or five of the more respectable inhabitants had also joined the group in the gateway, from the hands of one of whom the postillion quietly took a stout ash stick.  The corporal, however, was not a coward, and he saw that, if he intended to return with Peter Berrier, he should not delay his work with any further parley, so he took his pistol from his belt and cocked it, and, stepping quite close to Berrier, said,

“Come men—­forward, and bring him off; one man to each shoulder,” and he himself seized hold of the breast of Peter’s coat with his left hand and pulled him forward a step or two.

Peter was a little afraid of the pistol, but still he resisted manfully:  from the corporal’s position, Cathelineau was unable to reach with his stick the arm which had laid hold of Berrier, but it descended heavily on the first soldier, who came to the corporal’s assistance.  The blow fell directly across the man’s wrist, and his arm dropt powerless to his side.  The corporal immediately released his hold of Peter’s coat, and turning on Cathelineau raised his pistol and fired; the shot missed the postillion, but it struck M. Debedin, the keeper of the auberge, and wounded him severely in the jaw.  He was taken at once into the house, and the report was instantaneously spread through the town, that M. Debedin had been shot dead by the soldiery.

The ash stick of the postillion was again raised, and this time the corporal’s head was the sufferer; the man’s shako protected his skull, which, if uncovered, would have probably been fractured; but he was half-stunned, at any rate stupified by the blow, and was pulled about and pushed from one to another by the crowd who had now collected in the archway, without making any further attempt to carry off his prisoner.