There's nothing they would not dare!..." Consternation was so great that the matter could not even be discussed.
"We'll go to Gayole and see this woman at any rate." Angry, sullen crowds assembled in the streets.

The proclamation had been read just as the men were leaving the public houses, preparing to go home for the night.
They brought the news to the women, who, at home, were setting the soup and bread on the table for their husbands' supper.

There was no thought of going to bed or of sleeping that night.

The bread-winner in every family and all those dependent on him for daily sustenance were trembling for their lives.
Resistance to the barbarous order would have been worse than useless, nor did the thought of it enter the heads of these humble and ignorant fisher folk, wearied out with the miserable struggle for existence.
There was not sufficient spirit left in this half-starved population of a small provincial city to suggest open rebellion.

A regiment of soldiers come up from the South were quartered in the Chateau, and the natives of Boulogne could not have mustered more than a score of disused blunderbusses between them.
Then they remembered tales which Andre Lemoine had told, the fate of Lyons, razed to the ground, of Toulon burnt to ashes, and they did not dare rebel.
But brothers, fathers, sons trooped out towards Gayole, in order to have a good look at the frowning pile, which held the hostage for their safety.