The sentence was accordingly written; and having been signed by all the members of the council, Garcias took it, as he said, to have it fixed upon the front of the palace, and left us. His absence, however, had, beyond doubt, another object, for while the corregidor was, according to the direction of the council, writing a despatch from the provisional government of Catalonia, to the prime minister of France, the stern voice of the insurrectionary leader was heard in the square, giving the word of command, "Fire!" The report of a platoon was instantly heard; and it was not difficult to guess that Moreno had tasted of that fate which he had been so willing to inflict on others. The despatches were soon prepared; and the council, willing to assume all the pomp of established authority, ordered me to be conducted to the port, as one of its members, with all sort of ceremony. Garcias remained at the palace, to take measures against any movement on the part of Moreno's partizans; but the corregidor accompanied me to the water side: and having formally resigned the seat, to which I had been called in the council, I embarked on board the brigantine, and took leave, for ever of Barcelona. CHAPTER XXVIII. The most humiliating of all the various kinds of human suffering is undoubtedly sea-sickness, and therefore I will willingly pass over all my sensations in crossing the Gulf of Lyons. I believe, however, that the excessive importunity of my corporeal feelings did me good, inasmuch as it served, for a time, to obliterate from my memory the various strange and exciting scenes which I had lately gone through. If we could suppose the soul itself to be in a state of ebriety, I should say that my mind had been for several days drunk with excess of stimulus; and the relaxation consequent upon it, during the vacant hours of the voyage, would have been actually painful, had not the horrors of sea-sickness so employed the body, that the mind could not act. We landed, then, at Marseilles, after a safe and rapid passage, and I prepared to set out with all speed for Lyons, hoping, by being the first to bear the Cardinal de Richelieu news, which I well divined would be most joyful to him, that I might at all events remove some of the dangers and difficulties of my situation--a situation which I hardly dared to contemplate. My father, though richly endowed with personal courage, wanted, as I have said, that moral courage, which leads a man to look everything that is painful or disagreeable boldly in the face. With him, indeed, this disposition was carried to the excess of flying from the contemplation, even of inconvenient trifles; but enough of it had descended to me to make me willingly turn my eyes from circumstances like those in which I was now placed.