Down with the enemies of the people!"

The better class of people in the crowd assembled at the Hotel de
Ville had not followed the procession to the Abbaye. They had been
horror-struck at the words and actions of the Marseillais, and
felt that this was the beginning of the fulfilment of the rumours
of the last few days.

The murder of the first prisoner was indeed the signal for every
man of thought or feeling and of heart to draw back from the
Revolution. Thousands of earnest men who had at first thought that
the hour of life and liberty commenced with the meeting of the
States-General, and who had gone heart and soul with that body in
its early struggles for power, had long since shrunk back appalled
at the new tyranny which had sprung into existence.

Each act of usurpation of power by the Jacobins had alienated a
section. The nobles and the clergy, many of whom had at first gone
heartily with the early reformers, had shrunk back appalled when
they saw that religion and monarchy were menaced. The bourgeoisie,
who had made the Revolution, were already to a man against it; the
Girondists, the leaders of the third estate, had fallen away, and
over their heads the axe was already hanging. The Revolution had
no longer a friend in France, save among the lowest, the basest,
and the most ignorant. And now, by the massacres of the 2d of
September, the republic of France was to stand forth in the eyes
of Europe as a blood-stained monster, the enemy, not of kings
only, but of humanity in general. Thus the crowd following the
Marseillais was composed almost entirely of the scum of Paris,
wretches who had long been at war with society, who hated the rich,
hated the priests, hated all above them--men who had suffered
so much that they had become wild beasts, who were the products
of that evil system of society which had now been overthrown. The
greater proportion of them were in the pay of the Commune, for,
two days before, all the unemployed had been enrolled as the army
of the Commune. Thus there was no repetition before the Abbaye of
the cries of shame which had been heard in front of the Maine. The
shouts of the Marseillais were taken up and re-echoed by the mob.
Savage cries, curses, and shouts for vengeance filled the air;
many were armed, and knives and bludgeons, swords and pikes, were
brandished or shaken. Blood had been tasted, and all the savage
instincts were on fire.

"This is horrible, Henri!" Victor de Gis