The peasant, impulsive and inconsiderate, was not to be trusted without direction, and required to be watched so as to be kept to the ungrateful task of semi-military service. He was easily stirred to acts of furious violence, and as easily allowed himself to lapse into blind security. Having taken and destroyed l'Eglise and beaten back the _routiers_ on the Beune, the peasants considered that they had done all that could be required of them; they hastily reconverted their swords into the ploughshares that they had been, and dismounted their spears to employ them for their proper use as pruning-hooks. At the same time that they thus turned their implements of husbandry to peaceful ends, so did they dismantle themselves of all military ambition, and revert to the condition of the boor, whose thoughts are in the soil he turns and returns, whose produce he reaps and mows. The peasant mind is not flexible, and it is very limited in its range. It can think of but one thing at a time, and it is wholly void of that nimbleness which is acquired by association with men of many avocations and of intellectual culture. For a moment, stirred by intolerable wrongs, his passions had flared into an all-consuming flame. Now he was again the plodding ploughman, happy to handle the muckfork and the goad. Jean found it impossible to rouse the men to understand the necessity of being ever on the alert against the foe. Gros Guillem, said they, had pillaged Ste. Soure; he had done his worst; now he would go and plunder elsewhere. He had tried conclusions with them and had been worsted; in future he would test his strength against weaker men. _Allons!_ we have had enough of fighting--there is much to be done on the farm. Jean del' Peyra foresaw danger, and would not relax his efforts to be prepared to meet it. He established sentinels to keep watch night and day, and he marshalled the peasants and drilled them. They grumbled, and endeavoured to shirk, and he had hard matter to enforce discipline. He received tidings from Domme, and ascertained that the feet of the Captain were completely restored; and that he was about the town and citadel as usual.