This, instead of being a relief, awoke me to a sense of my danger, and feeling I could do nothing for the wounded man, for the death rattle had already begun, I entered my house, half shut the door, and listened.
"Qui vive ?" asked the corporal.
"Idiot!" said someone else, "to ask 'Qui vive ?' of a dead man!" "He is not dead," said a third voice; "listen to him singing"; and indeed the poor fellow in his agony was giving utterance to dreadful groans.
"Someone has tickled him well," said a fourth, "but what does it matter?
We had better finish the job." Five or six musket shots followed, and the groans ceased.
The name of the man who had just expired was Louis Lichaire; it was not against him, but against his nephew, that the assassins had had a grudge, but finding the nephew out when they burst into the house, and a victim being indispensable, they had torn the uncle from the arms of his wife, and, dragging him towards the citadel, had killed him as I have just related.
Very early next morning I sent to three commissioners of police, one after the other, for permission to have the corpse carried to the hospital, but these gentlemen were either not up or had already gone out, so that it was not until eleven o'clock and after repeated applications that they condescended to give me the needed authorisation.
Thanks to this delay, the whole town came to see the body of the unfortunate man.

Indeed, the day which followed a massacre was always kept as a holiday, everyone leaving his work undone and coming out to stare at the slaughtered victims.

In this case, a man wishing to amuse the crowd took his pipe out of his mouth and put it between the teeth of the corpse--a joke which had a marvellous success, those present shrieking with laughter.
Many murders had been committed during the night; the companies had scoured the streets singing some doggerel, which one of the bloody wretches, being in poetic vein, had composed, the chorus of which was--, "Our work's well done, We spare none!" Seventeen fatal outrages were committed, and yet neither the reports of the firearms nor the cries of the victims broke the peaceful slumbers of M, le Prefet and M.le Commissaire General de la Police.

But if the civil authorities slept, General Lagarde, who had shortly before come to town to take command of the city in the name of the king, was awake.

He had sprung from his bed at the first shot, dressed himself, and made a round of the posts; then sure that everything was in order, he had formed patrols of chasseurs, and had himself, accompanied by two officers only, gone wherever he heard cries for help.