At that same hour, the Faubourg was still shuddering at the tragedy which had just stained the Aire Saint-Mittre with blood.  The return of the troops, after the carnage on the Nores plain, had been marked by the most cruel reprisals.  Men were beaten to death behind bits of wall, with the butt-ends of muskets, others had their brains blown out in ravines by the pistols of gendarmes.  In order that terror might impose silence, the soldiers strewed their road with corpses.  One might have followed them by the red trail which they left behind.[*] It was a long butchery.  At every halting-place, a few insurgents were massacred.  Two were killed at Sainte-Roure, three at Ocheres, one at Beage.  When the troops were encamped at Plassans, on the Nice road, it was decided that one more prisoner, the most guilty, should be shot.  The victors judged it wise to leave this fresh corpse behind them in order to inspire the town with respect for the new-born Empire.  But the soldiers were now weary of killing; none offered himself for the fatal task.  The prisoners, thrown on the beams in the timber-yard as though on a camp bed, and bound together in pairs by the hands, listened and waited in a state of weary, resigned stupor.

[*] Though M. Zola has changed his place in his account of the insurrection, that account is strictly accurate in all its chief particulars.  What he says of the savagery both of the soldiers and of their officers is confirmed by all impartial historical writers.—­EDITOR.

At that moment the gendarme Rengade roughly opened a way for himself through the crowd of inquisitive idlers.  As soon as he heard that the troops had returned with several hundred insurgents, he had risen from bed, shivering with fever, and risking his life in the cold, dark December air.  Scarcely was he out of doors when his wound reopened, the bandage which covered his eyeless socket became stained with blood, and a red streamlet trickled over his cheek and moustache.  He looked frightful in his dumb fury with his pale face and blood-stained bandage, as he ran along closely scrutinising each of the prisoners.  He followed the beams, bending down and going to and fro, making the bravest shudder by his abrupt appearance.  And, all of a sudden:  “Ah! the bandit, I’ve got him!” he cried.

He had just laid his hand on Silvere’s shoulder.  Silvere, crouching down on a beam, with lifeless and expressionless face, was looking straight before him into the pale twilight, with a calm, stupefied air.  Ever since his departure from Sainte-Roure, he had retained that vacant stare.  Along the high road, for many a league, whenever the soldiers urged on the march of their captives with the butt-ends of their rifles, he had shown himself as gentle as a child.  Covered with dust, thirsty and weary, he trudged onward without saying a word, like one of those docile animals that herdsmen drive along.  He was thinking of Miette.  He ever saw her lying on the banner, under the trees with her eyes turned upwards.  For three days he had seen none but her; and at this very moment, amidst the growing darkness, he still saw her.