On Ascension night, 1242, while Pierre Cella was tranquilly winding up his work at Montauban, the world was startled with the news that a holocaust of the terrible inquisitors had been made at Avignonet, a little town about twelve leagues from Toulouse. The stern Guillem Arnaud and the courteous Étienne de Saint-Thibery were making, like their colleague Pierre Cella, a circuit through the district subjected to their mercy. Some of their sentences which have been preserved show that in November, 1241, they were laboring at Lavaur and at Saint-Paul de Caujoux, and in the spring of 1242 they came to Avignonet.[39] Raymond d’Alfaro was its bailli for the count, who was his uncle through his mother, Guillemetta, a natural daughter of Raymond VI. When he heard that the inquisitors and their assistants were coming he lost no time in preparing for their destruction. A swift messenger was despatched to the heretics of Montségur, and in answer to his summons Pierre Roger of Mirepoix, with a number of knights and their retainers, started at once. They halted in the forest of Gaiac, near Avignonet, where food was brought them, and they were joined by about thirty armed men of the vicinage, who waited with them till after nightfall. Had this plot failed, d’Alfaro had arranged another for an ambuscade on the road to Castelnaudary, and the fact that so extensive a conspiracy could be organized on the spot, without finding a traitor to betray it, shows how general was the hate that had been earned by the cruel work of the Inquisition. Not less significant is the fact that on their return to Montségur the murderers were hospitably entertained at the Château de Saint-Félix by a priest who was cognizant of their bloody deed.