They eat, drink, and break, giving themselves up to it heartily, not only in the town, but in the neighboring villages.

One detachment goes to Brusque, and proceeds so vigorously that the mayor and syndic-attorney scamper off across the fields, and dare not return for a couple of days.[3218] At Versol, the dwelling of the sworn cure, and at Lapeyre, that of the sworn vicar, are both sacked; the money is stolen and the casks are emptied.

In the house of the cure of Douyre, "furniture, clothes, cabinets, and window-sashes are destroyed"; they feast on his wine and the contents of his cupboard, throw away what they could not consume, then go in search of the cure and his brother, a former Carthusian, shouting that "their heads must be cut off; and sausage-meat made of the rest of their bodies!" Some of them, a little shrewder than the others, light on a prize; for example, a certain Bourguiere, a trooper of the line, seized a vineyard belonging to an old lady, the widow of a physician and former mayor;[3219] he gathered in its crop, "publicly in broad daylight," for his own benefit, and warns the proprietress that he will kill her if she makes a complaint against him, and, as she probably does complain of him, he obliges her, in the name of the Executive Power, to pay him fifty crowns damages .-- As to the common Jacobin gangsters, their reward, besides food and drink, is perfect licentiousness.

In all houses invaded at eleven o'clock in the evening.

Whilst the father flies, or the husband screams under the cudgel, one of the villains stations himself at the entrance with a drawn saber in his hands, and the wife or daughter remains at the mercy of the others; they seize her by the neck and maintain their hold.[3220] In vain does she scream for help.