The cut-throats bellowed with joy when they learned that a Republican of '89, who had risen to the rank of marshal under the Usurper, was about to pass through Avignon.

At the same time sinister reports began to run from mouth to mouth, the harbingers of death.

Once more the infamous slander which a hundred times had been proved to be false, raised its voice with dogged persistence, asserting that Brune, who did not arrive at Paris until the 5th of September, 1792, had on the 2nd, when still at Lyons, carried the head of the Princesse de Lamballe impaled on a pike.

Soon the news came that the marshal had just escaped assassination at Aix, indeed he owed his safety to the fleetness of his horses.

Pointu, Forges, and Roquefort swore that they would manage things better at Avignon.
By the route which the marshal had chosen there were only two ways open by which he could reach Lyons: he must either pass through Avignon, or avoid it by taking a cross-road, which branched off the Pointet highway, two leagues outside the town.