After having thus wrecked Blake’s second attempt to succour Gerona, and driven him from the neighbourhood, St. Cyr betook himself to Perpignan, in order, as he explained to the Minister of War[55], to hurry up provisions to the army at the front, and to compel the officers at the base to send forward some 3,000 or 4,000 convalescents fit to march, whose services had been persistently denied him[56]. Arrived there he heard that Augereau, whose gout had long disappeared, was perfectly fit to take the field, and could have done so long before if he had not preferred to shift on to other shoulders the responsibility for the siege of Gerona. He was, on October 1, at the baths of Molitg, ‘destroying the germs of his malady’ as he gravely wrote to Paris,--amusing himself, as St. Cyr maintains in his memoirs. Convinced that the siege had still a long time to run, and eager to do an ill turn to the officer who had intrigued to get his place, St. Cyr played on the Marshal precisely the same trick that Verdier had played on himself a fortnight before. He announced that he was indisposed, wrote to congratulate Augereau on his convalescence, and to resign the command to his hands, and departed to his home, without waiting for an answer, or obtaining leave from Paris--a daring act, as Napoleon was enraged, and might have treated him hardly. He was indeed put under arrest for a short time. [55] See St. Cyr to the Minister, Belmas, ii. Appendix no. 67. [56] Augereau to the Minister, ibid., Oct. 8.