est deception had been practiced, in denying
or in not fully confessing any suspicious appearances, the person was
to be arrested and imprisoned. If a person were found in any dwelling
but his own, he was to be imprisoned as under suspicion. Guards were
to be placed in all unoccupied houses. A double cordon of soldiers
were stationed around the walls, to arrest all who should attempt to
escape. Armed boats floated upon the Seine, at the two extremities of
Paris, that every possible passage of escape might be closed. Gardens,
groves, promenades, all were to be searched.

With so much energy was this work conducted, that that very night a
body of workmen were sent, with torches and suitable tools, to open an
access to the subterranean burial-grounds extending under a portion of
Paris, that a speedy disposal might be made of the anticipated
multitude of dead bodies. The decree, conveying terror to ten thousand
bosoms, spread with the rapidity of lightning through the streets and
the dwellings of Paris. Every one who had expressed a sentiment of
loyalty; every one who had a friend who was an emigrant or a loyalist;
every one who had uttered a word of censure in reference to the
sanguinary atrocities of the Revolution; every one who inherited an
illustrious name, or who had an unfriendly neighbor or an inimical
servant, trembled at the swift approach of the impending doom.

Bands of men, armed with pikes, brought into power from the dregs of
society, insolent, merciless, and resistless, accompanied by martial
music, traversed the streets in all directions. As the commissaries
knocked at a door, the family within were pale and paralyzed with
terror. The brutal inquisitors appeared to delight in the anguish
which their stern office extorted, and the more refined the family in
culture or the more elevated in rank, the more severely did vulgarity
in power trample them in the dust of humiliation. They took with them
workmen acquainted with all possible modes of concealment. They broke
locks, burst in panels, cut open beds and mattresses, tore up floors,
sounded wells, explored garrets and cellars for secret doors and
vaults, and could they find in any house an individual whom affection
or hospitality had sheltered, a rusty gun, an old picture of any
member of the royal family, a button with the royal arms, a letter
from a suspected person, or containing a sentiment against the "Reign
of Terror," the father was instantly and rude