The news had spread through the city, faster than the plague.
These gentlemen of the Parliament of Aix, well sheltered in their country house, had ordered the aldermen to close all the gates of the city before nightfall.
In a few hours, Marseille would be nothing more than an immense open-air lazaretto where 80,000 souls would have no other resources than to prepare to appear before God.
The canons of the chapter not being in such a hurry, they immediately packed their trunks and went in procession to the episcopal palace from where they hoped that Bishop de Belsunce would offer them both a place in his carriages and the safe-conduct without which the Regent's dragoons now fired on sight.
These devils of soldiers hearing neither patois nor Latin, parleying was useless and they were quite capable of treating holy men of the Church like vulgar Cevennes Huguenots.
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