ollowing the example
of Paris," twenty-one prisoners taken from the Versailles prisons. At
Paris the Minister of Justice thanks them, the Commune congratulates
them, and the sections feast them and embrace them.[31127]--Can anybody
doubt that they were ready to begin again? Can a step be taken in or out
of Paris without being subject to their oppression or encountering their
despotism? Should one leave the city, sentinels of their species are
posted at the barriers and on the section committees in continuous
session. Malouet, led before that of Roule,[31128] sees before him a
pandemonium of fanatics, at least a hundred individuals in the same
room, the suspected, those denouncing them, collaborators, attendants,
a long, green table in the center, covered with swords and daggers,
with the committee around it, "twenty patriots with their shirt sleeves
rolled up, some holding pistols and others pens," signing warrants of
arrest, "quarreling with and threatening each other, all talking
at once, and shouting: Traitor!--Conspirator!--Off to prison with
him!--Guillotine him!--and behind these, a crowd of spectators,
pell-mell, yelling, and gesticulating" like wild beasts pressed against
each other in the same cage, showing their teeth and trying to spring at
each other. "One of the most excited, brandishing his saber in order
to strike an antagonist, stopped on seeing me, and exclaimed, 'There's
Malouet!'--The other, however, less occupied with me than with his
enemy, took advantage of the opportunity, and with a blow of his club,
knocked him down." Malouet had a close shave, in Paris escapes take
place by such accidents.--If one remains in the city, one is beset with
lugubrious fears by,

1. the hurrying step of squads of men in each street, leading the
suspected to prison or before the committee;

2. around each prison the crowds that have come "to see the disasters";

3. in the court of the Abaye the cry of the auctioneer selling the
clothes of the dead;

4. the rumbling of carts on the pavement bearing away 1,300 corpses;

5. the songs of the women mounted aloft on the carts, beating time on
the naked bodies.[31129]

Is there a man who, after one of these encounters, does not see himself
in imagination before the green table of the section committee, after
this, in prison with sabers over his head, and then in the cart in the
midst of the bloody pile?

Courage falters before a vision like this. All the journals app