In these enterprises I occasionally met with some adventures that afforded me entertainment; but the only event worth relating, perhaps, was the capture of two persons whom I have had occasion to mention more than once. A truce of a few weeks had been concluded in the early part of spring, and I did all that I could to secure to the inhabitants of the frontier lands even a short space of tranquillity; but I soon found that the inactivity of both armies was seized by the hordes of marauders, which a long war had called into being, as an opportunity for pillage and exaction. I was instructed, if possible, to punish some of these bands of plunderers; and having heard of some movements on the part of the enemy, although the truce was not yet at an end, I sent out a party to reconnoitre, who fell in with a body of Spaniards and Germans, and in a charge took about half-a-dozen officers and soldiers, amongst whom were the two leaders of the adverse troop. The prisoners were immediately brought into Binches, followed by a crowd of the peasantry of the neighbouring villages, who charged them loudly with being mere plunderers and assassins, and accused them of a number of acts, certainly not very honourable to the military character. All this was reported to me by the officer who took them, and who, at the same time, laid before me a number of articles of a very miscellaneous description, which had been found upon their persons, or amongst their baggage, and which tended strongly to confirm the charges made by the peasantry. Learning upon inquiry that the two leaders were Frenchmen, and knowing, as I have mentioned, that, under the pretext of the war, a most disgraceful system of rapine and robbery was carried on upon the frontier, which system I had been commanded to put down by the most severe measures, I determined sternly to hang one of these gentlemen before the gate of the town,--an act which I was authorised to perform by my own instructions, and which had more than once been executed by the Spanish officers under similar circumstances. Resolving to make them draw lots for the fate to which I destined one of them, I ordered them to be brought before me; but my purpose was suddenly changed when I beheld in the two culprits my old acquaintances, Gaspard de Belleville, and his good brother-in-law, Captain Hubert, who seemed to have thoroughly initiated his sister's husband into the mystery of appropriating the property of other people. What were the peculiar bonds that united them so strongly together I never inquired; although, as I knew that their connexion by means of Suzette was not likely to be a very inseparable link, I judged that a similarity of tastes and pursuits, as well as interests and necessities, made them cooperate with the friendly zeal which seemed to actuate them.