It was clearly unsafe to cross the river. The town of Aramon le Vieux was a hornets' nest, all Gambetta republicans and royalists. The department, too, had a fine National Guard, mostly Protestants or commanded by Protestants, and the Moblots or Mobiles of the department of Deux Rives were drilling every day. What plundering was to be done must be on this side of the bridge, but there was abundance and to spare for all, if the business were rightly managed. The first step was to disarm the doubtful companies, and re-enlist only those who were of proper anarchist hue and ready for "expropriation." This was done in the Riding School where the Committee sat all day devising mischief and laying out evil as on a map. On the night of the 6th of April they were ready. The villas and country houses left vacant by the officers of the troops formerly quartered in Aramon had remained unoccupied, and, as the soldiers went right off to the seat of war from Aramon Junction, the furniture and personal belongings were equally untouched. The wives and children had been dispatched to the care of parents paternal and maternal in Limousin castles and Norman apple-orchards. Only an ancient caretaker or two remained, hiding in some niche of the ground floor and cautiously venturing out to make a hasty and furtive "market" in the grey of the morning. For the adepts of "individual redistribution" these served to whet an appetite. By midnight Jack Jaikes called me up on the roof of the Chateau. All along the river front houses were already flaming. Some, as I looked, climaxed their particular display by the crashing down of roofs and the falling in of floor after floor, followed by bursts of flame many hundreds of feet high, which lit up the dim river and the white houses of Aramon le Vieux. I could see the ancient battlements of the Lycee St. Andre serrated against a velvet-black sky--nay, I could make out that very forehead of promenade from which we had watched, that day in January, the tricolour give place to the Tatter of Scarlet. The rabble were giving tongue down there like packs of wolves, and at the sound Jack Jaikes stamped and cursed as men swear only in Clydeside ship-building yards. "Whist now, Jackie," said the voice of Dennis Deventer at my elbow, "what's the use of using all the Lord's fine big words that are meant to embellish Scripture on the like of them? Is it not tempting Providence to be cursing fools who are sprinting hot-foot to damnation by themselves?" "Wait--oh, wait," growled Jack Jaikes, jerking his joints till they creaked in a way he had when he was excited; "I shall make them sing to a different tune. Listen to them baying. Chief" (he turned suddenly to Dennis) "could I not just lob over half a dozen shrapnel among these cattle? They seem to be having it all their own way. Let me remind them that there's a God left in the universe."