The massacre lasted all night. All night cries, shrieks and moans echoed through the darkness. They killed them all, men and women. It took a long time, for, as we have said, the executioners were drunk and poorly armed. However, the task was finished after a time. As soon as the victims were killed they were thrown, dead and wounded together, into the pit of the Trouillasse Tower, a distance of some sixty feet down. The men were thrown first, and then the women. At nine o'clock in the morning, after the massacre had lasted twelve hours, a voice cried out from the depths of the sepulchre: "For God's sake, come and finish me!"
One man, the armorer Bouffier, leaned over the hole; the others did not dare.
"Who called?" they asked him.
"It was Lami," he replied, drawing back.
"Well," asked the assassins, "what do you see down there?"
"A queer marmalade," he replied; "all pell-mell, men and women, priests and pretty girls. It is enough to make one die of laughing."
At that moment cries of grief and shouts of triumph made themselves heard, and the name of Fargas was repeated by a thousand voices. It was indeed the count whom they were bringing to Jourdan Coupe-Tête. He had just been found hidden in a cask in the Hôtel Palais-Royal. He was half naked, and covered with such immense quantities of blood that they did not know but what he would fall dead when they loosened their grip.