On the 16th of October a gloomy agitation betrayed itself by the mobs of people collecting on various points, particularly consisting of persons enemies of the Revolution. The walls of the church were covered with placards, calling on the people to revolt against the provisional authority of the municipality. There were bruited about rumours of absurd miracles, which demanded in the name of Heaven vengeance for the assaults made against religion. A statue of the Virgin worshipped by the people in the church of the Cordeliers had blushed at the profanations of her temple. She had been seen to shed tears of indignation and grief. The people, educated under the papal government in such superstitious credulities, had gone in a body to the Cordeliers to avenge the cause of their protectress. Animated by fanatical exhortations, confiding in the divine interposition, the mob, on quitting the Cordeliers, and increasing as it went, hurried to the ramparts, closed the doors, turned the cannon on the city, and then spread themselves through the streets, demanding with loud clamours the overthrow of the government. The unfortunate Lescuyer, notary of Avignon, secretary (_greffier_) of the municipality, more particularly pointed out to the fury of the mob, was dragged violently from his residence, and along the pavement to the altar of the Cordeliers, where he was murdered by sabre-strokes and blows from bludgeons, trampled under foot, his dead body outraged and cast as an expiatory victim at the feet of the offended statue. The national guard, having despatched a detachment with two pieces of cannon from the fort, drove back the infuriated populace, and picked from the pavement the naked and lifeless carcase of Lescuyer. The prisons of the city had been broken open, and the miscreants they contained came to offer their assistance for other murders. Horrible reprisals were feared, and yet the mediators, absent from the city, were asleep, or closed their eyes upon the actual danger. The understanding between the leaders of the Paris clubs and the rioters of Avignon became more fearfully intimate. VII.