e capable of responding to it."

Thus does Huez act, and he even does more, paying no attention to their
menaces, refusing to provide for his own safety and almost offering
himself as a sacrifice.

"I have wronged no one," he exclaimed; "why should any one bear me
ill-will?"

His sole precaution is to provide something for the unfortunate poor
when he is gone: he bequeaths in his will 18,000 livres to the poor,
and, on the eve of his death, sends 100 crowns to the bureau of charity.
But what avail self-abnegation and beneficence against blind, insane
rage! On the 9th of September, three loads of flour proving to be
unsound, the people collect and shout out,

"Down with the flour-dealers! Down with machinery! Down with the mayor!
Death to the mayor, and let Truelle be put in his place!"

Huez, on leaving his court-room, is knocked down, murdered by kicks and
blows, throttled, dragged to the reception hall, struck on his head
with a wooden-shoe and pitched down the grand staircase. The municipal
officers strive in vain to protect him; a rope is put around his neck
and they begin to drag him along. A priest, who begs to be allowed at
least to save his soul, is repulsed and beaten. A woman jumps on
the prostrate old man, stamps on his face and repeatedly thrusts her
scissors in his eyes. He is dragged along with the rope around his neck
up to the Pont de la Selle, and thrown into the neighboring ford, and
then drawn out, again dragged through the streets and in the gutters,
with a bunch of hay crammed in his mouth.[1323]

In the meantime, his house as well as that of the lieutenant of police,
that of the notary Guyot, and that of M. de Saint-Georges, are sacked;
the pillaging and destruction lasts four hours; at the notary's house,
six hundred bottles of wine are consumed or carried off; objects of
value are divided, and the rest, even down to the iron balcony, is
demolished or broken; the rioters cry out, on leaving, that they have
still to burn twenty-seven houses, and to take twenty-seven heads. "No
one at Troyes went to bed that fatal night."--During the succeeding
days, for nearly two weeks, society seems to be dissolved. Placards
posted about the streets proscribe municipal officers, canons, divines,
privileged persons, prominent merchants, and even ladies of charity; the
latter are so frightened that they throw up their office, while a number
of persons move off into the country; others barricade themselves in