Monsieur Lecoq, Volume II by Emile Gaboriau

After Lacheneur had been executed, the co-dictators, regretting, as we have already said, the precipitation with which they had sentenced many of the minor partisans of the revolt, sought to propitiate public opinion by treating the remaining prisoners with unexpected clemency. Out of a hundred peasants still confined in the citadel, only eighteen or twenty were tried, and the sentences pronounced upon them were light in the extreme; all the others were released. Major Carini, the leader of the military conspirators in Montaignac, had expected to lose his head, but to his own astonishment he was only sentenced to two years' imprisonment. This tardy indulgence did not, however, efface popular recollections of previous severity, and the townsfolk of Montaignac openly declared that if MM. de Sairmeuse and de Courtornieu were clement, it was only because they were afraid of the consequences that might await continued tyranny.

So thus it came to pass that people execrated them for their past cruelty, and despised them for their subsequent cowardice. However, both the duke and the marquis were ignorant of the true current of public opinion, and hurried on with their preparations for their children's wedding. It was arranged that the ceremony should take place on the 17th of April, at the village church of Sairmeuse, and that a grand entertainment should be given to the guests in the duke's chateau, which was indeed transformed into a fairy palace for the occasion.