ons exclaimed. "I feel as
if I were in a nightmare, not that any nightmare could compare in
terror to this. Look at those hideous faces--faces of men debased
by crime, sodden with drink, degraded below the level of brutes,
exulting in the thought of blood, lusting for murder; and to think
that these creatures are the masters of France. Great Heavens! What
can come of it in the future? What is going to take place now?"

"Organized massacre, I fear, Victor. What seemed incredible,
impossible, is going to take place; there is to be a massacre of
the prisoners."

They had by this time reached the monastery of the Carmelites, now
converted into a prison. Here a large number of priests had been
collected. The Marseillais entered, and the prisoners were called
by name to assemble in the garden.

First the Archbishop of Arles was murdered; then they fell upon the
others and hewed them down. The Bishops of Saintes and Beauvais
were among the slain, and the assassins did not desist until the
last prisoner in the Carmelites had been hacked to pieces. Graves
had already been dug near the Barrier Saint Jacques and carts were
waiting to convey the corpses there, showing how carefully the
preparations for the massacre had been made.

Then the Marseillais returned to the Abbaye, and, with a crowd
of followers, entered the great hall. Here the bailiff Maillard
organized a sort of tribunal of men taken at random from the
crowd. Some of these were paid hirelings of the Commune, some were
terrified workmen or small tradesmen who had, merely from curiosity,
joined the mob. The Swiss officers and soldiers, who were, with the
priests, special objects of hatred to the mob, were first brought
out. They were spared the farce of a trial, they were ordered to
march out through the doors, outside which the Marseillais were
awaiting them. Some hesitated to go out, and cried for mercy.

A young man with head erect was the first to pass through the fatal
doors. He fell in a moment, pierced with pikes. The rest followed
him, and all save two, who were, by some caprice of the mob,
spared, shared his fate. The mob had crowded into the galleries
which surrounded the hall and applauded with ferocious yells the
murder of the soldiers. In the body of the hall a space was kept
clear by the armed followers of the Commune round the judges' table,
and a pathway to the door from the interior of the prison to that
opening into the street.

When the Swiss