The vicar implored for mercy for the town, and the officer promised to intervene with his superiors in order to obtain a mitigation of the sentence. Whether he gained his point or whether the giving up of the direct march on Paris caused the part of scape-goat assigned to the peaceful little town to appear of less immediate necessity, the incendiarism was limited to the Rue de la République and the Quartier de la Licorne. _The tourist will visit the +Cathedral+ (see pp. 53-59), +Saint-Frambourg+ (p. 60), the +Castle+ (pp. 61-63), and will then go down the old Rue du Châtel._ [Illustration: ABBÉ DOURLENT] This road was the scene of an outrage of 1789, famous in the annals of Senlis. The clockmaker Billon, seeing beneath his windows the company of musketeers from which, as usurer, he had been dismissed, raised his musket and killed the commandant and several others. Trapped in his house, he backed from room to room still adding to the number of his victims. At the moment when they seized him the mine that he had prepared exploded, destroying his house and leaving twenty-six dead and forty injured. _The Rue du Châtel ends in the Square Henri IV., in the corner of which stands the +Town-hall+._ Its façade (_see below_) dates from 1495. Above the door is the bust of Henri IV., with an inscription taken from the letters-patent sent by the king to Senlis as thanks for the town's resistance against the Leaguers: "_Mon heur a prins son commencement en la ville de Senlis, dont il s'est depuis semé et augmenté par tout le royaume._" (_My good fortune had its beginning in the Town of Senlis, whence it has since sown itself and spread over all the kingdom._) The Square Henri IV. received the first shells of the bombardment in September, 1914, which killed a fireman on guard at the town-hall. When the Germans penetrated into Senlis, one of their superior officers went to the town-hall and asked for the "burgomaster." [Illustration: TOWN HALL] [Illustration: LAST PHOTOGRAPH OF M. ODENT (in the middle)] The mayor, M. Odent, came forward. For three generations the Odents had been mayors of Senlis. The grandfather of the present mayor distinguished himself during the cholera epidemic in 1832; his father was seized as hostage in 1870 and narrowly escaped being shot. On the eve of the German occupation, M. Odent took his family to Paris and on his return to Senlis wrote a postcard to M. Cultru, oldest member of the municipal council, as follows:-- "Having at last placed my wife in safety, I now belong entirely to Senlis." M. Odent had the presentiment that he would not come out of German hands alive; a fervent catholic, he performed his religious duties in view of a swiftly approaching death, and fastened a crucifix on his breast. Above we give the last photograph of M. Odent. It was taken on August 5, 1914, during a military fête. M. Odent is in the middle.