6. the silence of death reigns after six o'clock in the evening, and
then,

7. in each street, a patrol of sixty pikemen, seven hundred squads
of sans-culottes, all working at the same time, and with their usual
brutality,

8. doors are burst in with pile drivers,

9. wardrobes are picked by locksmiths,

10. walls are sounded by masons,

11. cellars are searched even to digging in the ground,

12. papers are seized,

13. arms are confiscated,

14. three thousand persons are arrested and led off;[3138] priests, old
men, the infirm, the sick.

The action lasts from ten in the evening to five o'clock in the morning,
the same as in a city taken by assault, the screams of women rudely
treated, the cries of prisoners compelled to march, the oaths of the
guards, cursing and drinking at each grog-shop; never was there such
an universal, methodical execution, so well calculated to suppress all
inclination for resistance in the silence of general stupefaction.

And yet, at this very moment, there are those who act in good faith
in the sections and in the Assembly, and who rebel at being under such
masters. A deputation from the Lombards section, and another from the
Corn-market, come to the Assembly and protest against the Commune's
usurpations.[3139] Choudieu, the Montagnard, denounces its blatant
corrupt practices. Cambon, a stern financier, will no longer consent
to have his accounts tampered with by thieving tricksters.[3140]
The Assembly at last seems to have recovered itself. It extends its
protection to Geray, the journalist, against whom the new pashas had
issued a warrant; it summons to its own bar the signers of the warrant,
and orders them to confine themselves in future to the exact limits
of the law which they transgress. Better still, it dissolves the
interloping Council, and substitutes for it ninety-six delegates, to be
elected by the sections in twenty-four hours. And, even still better, it
orders an account to be rendered within two days of the objects it has
seized, and the return of all gold or silver articles to the Treasury.
Quashed, and summoned to disgorge their booty, the autocrats of the
Hotel-de-ville come in vain to the Assembly in force on the following
day[3141] to extort from it a repeal of its decrees; the Assembly,
in spite of their threats and those of their satellites, stands its
ground.--So much the worse for the stubborn; if they are not disposed to
regard the flash of the saber