The next day countrymen flock in to give their aid against bandits who are still absent.

"At nine o'clock," says a witness, "we had 40,000 men in the town, to whom we showed our gratitude." As the bandits do not show themselves, it must be because they are concealed; a hundred horsemen, a large number of men on foot, start out to search the forest of Braconne, and to their great surprise they find nothing.

But the terror is not allayed; "during the following days a guard is kept mounted, and companies are enrolled among the townsmen," while Bordeaux, duly informed, dispatches a courier to offer the support of 20,000 men and even 30,000.

"What is surprising," adds the narrator, is that at ten leagues off in the neighborhood, in each parish, a similar disturbance took place, and at about the same hour."-- All that is required is that a girl, returning to the village at night, should meet two men who do not belong to the neighborhood.

The case is the same in Auvergne.