and suddenly, at the last moment, pouncing like a cat on his
prey, and trying to slaughter his rivals, the Girondists.[3168]

Up to this time, in slaughtering or having it done, it was always as
insurrectionists in the street; now, it is in places of imprisonment, as
magistrates and functionaries, according to the registers of a lock-up,
after proofs of identity and on snap judgments, by paid executioners,
in the name of public security, methodically, and in cool blood, almost
with the same regularity as subsequently under "the revolutionary
government." September, indeed, is the beginning of it, a summary and
a model; they will not do it differently or better than during the best
days of the guillotine. Only, as they are as yet poorly supplied with
tools, they are obliged to use pikes instead of the guillotine, and,
as decency has not entirely disappeared, the chiefs conceal themselves
behind maneuvers. Nevertheless, we can track them, take them in the act,
and we have their signatures; they planned commanded, and conducted the
operation. On the 30th of August, the Commune decided that the sections
should try accused persons, and, on the 2nd of September, five
trusted sections reply to it by resolving that the accused shall be
murdered.[3169] The same day, September 2, Marat takes his place on the
Committee of Supervision. The same day, September 2, Panis and Sergent
sign the commissions of "their comrades," Maillard and associates,
for the Abbaye, and "order them to judge," that is to say, kill the
prisoners.[3170] The same and the following days, at La Force, three
members of the Commune, Hebert, Monneuse, and Rossignol, preside in
turn over the assassin court.[3171] The same day, a commissar of
the Committee of Supervision comes and demands a dozen men of
the Sans-Culottes section to help massacre the priests of Saint
Firmin.[3172] The same day, a commissar of the Commune visits the
different prisons during the slaughter, and finds that "things are going
on well in all of them."[3173] The same day, at five o'clock in the
afternoon, Billaud-Varennes, deputy-attorney for the Commune, "in his
well-known puce-colored coat and black perruque," walking over the
corpses, says to the Abbaye butchers: "Fellow-citizens, you are
immolating your enemies, you are performing your duty." He returns
during the night, highly commends them, and confirms the promise of
the "agreed wages." On the following any at noon, he again returns,