their dwellings and only open their doors with saber in hand. Not
until the 26th does the orderly class rally sufficiently to resume the
ascendancy and arrest the miscreants.--Such is public life in France
after the 14th of July: the magistrates in each town feel that they are
at the mercy of a band of savages and sometimes of cannibals. Those of
Troyes had just tortured Huez after the fashion of Hurons, while those
of Caen did worse; Major de Belzance, not less innocent, and under sworn
protection,[1324] was cut to pieces like Laperouse in the Fiji Islands,
and a woman ate his heart.

VI.--Taxes are no longer paid.

Devastation of the Forests.--The new game laws.

It is, under such circumstances, possible to foretell whether taxes come
in, and whether municipalities that sway about in every popular breeze
will have the authority to collect the odious revenues.--Towards the end
of September,[1325] I find a list of thirty-six committees or municipal
bodies which, within a radius of fifty leagues around Paris, refuse
to ensure the collection of taxes. One of them tolerates the sale
of contraband salt, in order not to excite a riot. Another takes the
precaution to disarm the employees in the excise department. In a
third the municipal officers were the first to provide themselves with
contraband salt and contraband tobacco.

At Peronne and at Ham, the order having come to restore the toll-houses,
the people destroy the soldiers' quarters, conduct all the employees
to their homes, and order them to leave within twenty-four hours, under
penalty of death. After twenty months' resistance Paris will end the
matter by forcing the National Assembly to give in and by obtaining the
final suppression of its octroi.[1326]--Of all the creditors whose hand
each one felt on his shoulders, that of the exchequer was the heaviest,
and now it is the weakest; hence this is the first whose grasp is to
be shaken off; there is none which is more heartily detested or which
receives harsher treatment. Especially against collectors of the
salt-tax, custom-house officers, and excisemen the fury is universal.
These, everywhere,[1327] are in danger of their lives and are obliged to
fly. At Falaise, in Normandy, the people threaten to "cut to pieces
the director of the excise." At Baignes, in Saintonge, his house is
devastated and his papers and effects are burned; they put a knife to
the throat of his son, a child six years of age, say