has been either stolen or broken
to pieces.[3215] In the third place, there is "punishment of the
ill-disposed." At nine o'clock in the evening a squad knocks at the door
of a distrusted shoemaker; it is opened by his apprentice; six of the
ruffians enter, and one of them, showing a paper, says to the poor
fellow:

"I come on the part of the Executive Power, by which you are condemned
to a beating."

"What for?"

"If you have not done anything wrong, you are thinking about it."[3216]

And so they beat him in the presence of his family. Many others like
him are seized and unmercifully beaten on their own premises.--As to
the expenses of the operation, these must be defrayed by the malevolent.
These, therefore, are taxed according to their occupations; this or that
tanner or dealer in cattle has to pay 36 francs; another, a hatter,
72 francs; otherwise "they will be attended to that very night at nine
o'clock." Nobody is exempt, if he is not one of the band. Poor old men
who have nothing but a five-franc assignat are compelled to give that;
they take from the wife of an unskilled laborer, whose savings consist
of seven sous and a half, the whole of this, exclaiming, "that is good
for three mugs of wine."[3217] When money is not to be had, they
take goods in kind; they make short work of cellars, bee-hives,
clothes-presses, and poultry-yards. They eat, drink, and break,
giving themselves up to it heartily, not only in the town, but in the
neighboring villages. One detachment goes to Brusque, and proceeds so
vigorously that the mayor and syndic-attorney scamper off across the
fields, and dare not return for a couple of days.[3218] At Versol, the
dwelling of the sworn cure, and at Lapeyre, that of the sworn vicar, are
both sacked; the money is stolen and the casks are emptied. In the house
of the cure of Douyre, "furniture, clothes, cabinets, and window-sashes
are destroyed"; they feast on his wine and the contents of his cupboard,
throw away what they could not consume, then go in search of the cure
and his brother, a former Carthusian, shouting that "their heads must
be cut off; and sausage-meat made of the rest of their bodies!" Some of
them, a little shrewder than the others, light on a prize; for example,
a certain Bourguiere, a trooper of the line, seized a vineyard belonging
to an old lady, the widow of a physician and former mayor;[3219] he
gathered in its crop, "publicly in broad daylight," for his own
benefit,