In 1793 it ran its first risk. With the laudable object of draining marshy land and rendering such lake bottoms as could be reclaimed serviceable for culture, a law was passed on the 14th to 16th Frimaire (4th to 6th December), and at the beginning of 1794 the Citizen Auzillon was deputed to inspect and report on Issarlès. But he was driven back by storms of snow, and obliged to postpone his examination of the lake. He started again in July, and was accompanied by the deputy sent down from Paris to organise an expedition for hunting out and bringing to the lamp-post or the guillotine the priests and royalists who were supposed to be in concealment in the neighbourhood. Auzillon declared in his report that the draining of the lake would cause an unwarrantable expense and prove unprofitable. It lay, he said, in the crater of an extinct volcano, and that he had been unable by sounding to discover the depth. The lake has been again threatened, this time with conversion into a reservoir for the water-supply of factories, to be established at a lower level. A scene, however beautiful it may be, always acquires additional charm when with it is connected something of human interest. And this must serve as an excuse for my introducing here a story that attaches to Issarlès. Beside the lake some years ago resided a man of singular character, a man over whose fortunes Fate seemed to have decreed "pas de chance." A memoir of this man was written after his death by an acquaintance. Pierre Noirot was born at Nîmes of a Protestant father and a Catholic mother. His father, Jacques, was a descendant of one of the Camisards, who had run his knife into the heart of the Abbé du Chayla at the Pont de Montvert. Noirot père had inherited from his ancestors nothing but an implacable hatred of Catholicism. He was a coarse-minded man of a brutal character, and was wholly uneducated. Having become a soldier, he passed from barrack to barrack, always quarrelsome, always discontented, always finding fault, so that he acquired the name of Captain Grumbler. When he left the army, he retired to Nîmes and lived on his pension. Inconsistently enough, he married a Catholic, a little needlewoman. Pierre was the fruit of this union. Mme. Noirot had him baptised privately by a priest of her religion. Jacques heard of this the same day, and mad with rage he fell on his wife and beat her so severely, though only just recovering from her confinement, that she died of the injuries inflicted upon her. From this moment the father bore an implacable dislike to his son. He sent him into the mountains to be fostered by peasants in the village of Issarlès, and thenceforth cared no further for him than to send grudgingly the meagre sum necessary for his keep.