o days before, he had been
still more explicit. "The 10th of August," said he, "divided us into
republicans and royalists; the first few in number, the second many...;
we must make the royalists afraid." A frightful gesture, a horizontal
gesture, sufficed to express his meaning.

Robbery preceded murder. It was a veritable raid. The Commune caused
the palaces, national property, the Garde-Meuble, the houses and
mansions of the _emigres_ to be pillaged. One saw nothing but carts
and wagons transporting stolen goods to the Hotel-de-Ville. All the
plate was stolen from the churches likewise. "Millions," says Madame
Roland in her Memoirs, "passed into the hands of people who used it to
perpetuate the anarchy which was the source of their domination." When
will the men of the Commune render their accounts? Never. Who are the
accomplices of Danton and Marat in organizing the massacres? A band of
defaulting accountants, faithless violators of public trusts, breakers
of locks, swindlers, spies, and men overwhelmed with debts. What
interest have they in planning the murders? That of perpetuating the
dictatorship they had assumed on the eve of August 10, and, above all,
of having no accounts to render. A few weeks later on, Collot
d'Herbois will say at the Jacobin Club: "The 2d of September is the
chief article in the creed of our liberty."

{363}

The jailors were forewarned. They served the prisoners' dinner
earlier, and took away their knives. There was a disturbed and uneasy
look in their faces which made the victims suspect their end was near.
Toward noon the general alarm was beaten in every street. The citizens
were ordered to return at once to their dwellings. An order was issued
to illuminate every house when night fell. The shops were closed.
Terror overspread the entire city.

It was agreed that at the third discharge of cannon the cut-throats
should set to work. The first blood shed was that of prisoners taken
from the mayoralty to the Abbey prison. The carriages containing them
passed along the Quai des Orfevres, the Pont-Neuf and rue Dauphine,
until it reached the Bussy square. Here there was a crowd assembled
around a platform where enlistments were going on. The throng impeded
the progress of the carriages. Thereupon one of the escort opened the
door of one of them, and standing on the step, plunged his sabre into
the breast of an aged priest. The multitude shuddered and fled in
affri