lood! And where
can it now be found? The prisons are empty. There are no more nobles,
no more priests, to put to death. Very well! for lack of anything
better, they will go to an asylum for the poor, the sick, and the
insane; to the Bicetre. Vagabonds, paupers, fools, thieves, steward,
chaplains, janitor, all is fish that comes to their net. The butchery
lasts five days and nights without stopping. Massacre takes every
form; some are drowned in the cellars, others shot in the courts.
Water, fire, and sword, every sort of torture.

{369}

The cut-throats can at last take some repose. They have worked all the
week. There are still some, however, who have not yet had enough, and
who are going to continue the massacres of Paris in the provinces. The
Communal Council of Surveillance has taken care to send to every
commune in France a circular bearing the seal of the Minister of
Justice, inviting them to follow the example of the capital.

September 9, the prisoners who had been detained at Orleans to be tried
there by the Superior Court, entered Versailles on carts. At the
moment when they approached the grating of the Orangery, assassins sent
from Paris under the lead of Fournier "the American" sprang upon them
and immolated every one. Thus perished the former Minister of Foreign
Affairs, de Lessart, and the Duke de Brissac, former commander of the
Constitutional Guard. Fournier "the American"[2] returned on horseback
to Paris and began to caracole on the Place Vendome; Danton loudly
felicitated him on the success of the expedition, from the balcony of
the Ministry of Justice.

During all this time, what efforts had the Assembly made to put a stop
to the murders? None, absolutely none. Never has any deliberative
body shown a like cowardice. Neither Vergniaud's voice nor that of any
other Girondin was heard in protest. Indignation, pity, found not a
single word to say. Speeches, {370} discussions, votes on different
questions, went on as usual. Concerning the massacres, not a syllable.
During that infamous week, neither the ministers, the virtuous Roland
not more than the others, neither Petion, the mayor of Paris, nor the
commander of the National Guard sent a picket guard of fifty men to any
quarter to prevent the murders. A population of eight hundred thousand
souls and a National Guard of fifty thousand men bent their necks under
the yoke of a handful of bandits, of two hundred and thirty-five
as