"What
is surprising," adds the narrator, is that at ten leagues off in the
neighborhood, in each parish, a similar disturbance took place, and
at about the same hour." -- All that is required is that a girl,
returning to the village at night, should meet two men who do not
belong to the neighborhood. The case is the same in Auvergne.
Whole parishes, on the strength of this, betake themselves at night
to the woods, abandoning their houses, and carrying away their
furniture; "the fugitives trod down and destroyed their own crops;
pregnant women were injured in the forests, and others lost their
wits." Fear lends them wings. Two years after this, Madame Campan
was shown a rocky peak on which a woman had taken refuge, and from
which she was obliged to be let down with ropes. -- The people at
last return to their homes, and resume their usual routines. But
such large masses are not unsettled with impunity; a tumult like
this is, in itself, a lively source of alarm. As the country did
rise, it must have been on account of threatened danger and if the
peril was not due to brigands, it must have come from some other
quarter.
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