sians were virtually prisoners.
Every house, every apartment was visited by inspectors. Rich and poor
were alike compelled to submit. Every suspicious article was seized, and
the man in whose dwelling it was discovered was arrested. The inspectors
performed their tasks with unnecessary harshness, ruthlessly destroying
any valuable object upon which they could lay their hands. They rapped
upon the walls to see if they contained any secret hiding-place; they
pierced the mattresses with their swords and poignards. After these
visits thousands of citizens were arrested and conducted to the Hotel
de Ville, where many were detained for thirty hours without food,
awaiting their turn to appear before the members of the Commune. After
their examination some were released; others were thrown into the
prisons, which were soon crowded to such a degree that there was not
room for a single newcomer by the first of September. If room could not
be found, room must be made; and the following day, the second of
September, twenty-four prisoners, chiefly priests, were led before the
mayor, adjudged guilty of treason, crowded into fiacres and taken to the
Abbaye, where they were executed immediately on their arrival.

After this, their first taste of blood, the executioners hastened to the
Chatelet and to the Conciergerie, where they wrought horrors that the
pen refuses to describe, sentencing to death the innocent and the guilty
without giving them any opportunity to defend themselves. Night did not
appease the fury of the butchers. On the third of September they killed
again at the Abbaye, at the Force and at the Bernardins prisons; and on
the fourth they continued their work of death at La Salpetriere and
Bicetre.

For three days the tocsin sounded. Bands of sans-culottes and
tricoteuses, thirsting for blood, traversed the streets, uttering cries
of death; and no one seemed to think of checking their sanguinary fury.
A prey to a truly remarkable panic, when we consider the relatively
small number of assassins, the terrified citizens remained shut up in
their houses. The National Assembly seemed powerless to arrest the
horrors of these tragical hours; the Commune seemed to favor them.

Of all those days that inspire us with such horror, even now, after the
lapse of nearly a century, the darkest was that which witnessed the
execution of the Princesse de Lamballe, who perished for no other crime
than that of love for the queen. Beheaded,