s hang by
a single thread. One is seized by the throat; another is knocked out of
his chair and threatened with hanging, a gun is aimed at him and he
is beaten and kicked; subsequently a plot is devised "to cut off their
heads and plunder their houses."

He who disposes of lives, indeed, also disposes of property. Roland
has only to flick through two or three reports to see how patriotism
furnishes a cloak for brutal license and greed. At Coucy, in the
department of Aisne,[3271] the peasantry of seventeen parishes,
assembled for the purpose of furnishing their military quota, rush with
a loud clamor to two houses, the property of M. des Fosses, a former
deputy to the Constituent Assembly, and the two finest in the town; one
of them had been occupied by Henry IV. Some of the municipal officers
who try to interfere are nearly cut to pieces, and the entire municipal
body takes to flight. M. des Fosses, with his two daughters, succeed in
hiding themselves in an obscure corner in the vicinity, and afterwards
in a small tenement offered to them by a humane gardener, and finally,
after great difficulty, they reach Soissons. Of his two houses, "nothing
remains but the walls. Windows, casings, doors, and wainscoting, all
are shattered"; twenty thousand francs of assignats in a portfolio are
destroyed or carried off; the title-deeds of the property are not to be
found, and the damage is estimated at 200,000 francs. The pillage lasted
from seven o'clock in the morning to seven o'clock in the evening, and,
as is always the case, ended in a fete. The plunderers, entering the
cellars, drank "two hogsheads of wine and two casks of brandy; thirty
or forty remained dead drunk, and were taken away with considerable
difficulty." There is no prosecution, no investigation; the new mayor,
who, one month after, makes up his mind to denounce the act, begs the
Minister not to give his name, for, he says, "the agitators in the
council-general of the Commune threaten, with fearful consequences,
whoever is discovered to have written to you."[3272]--Such is the
ever-present menace under which the gentry live, even when veterans
in the service of freedom; Roland, foremost in his files, finds
heartrending letters addressed directly to him, as a last recourse.
Early in 1789, M. de Gouy d'Arcy[3273] was the first to put his pen
to paper in behalf of popular rights. A deputy of the noblesse to the
Constituent Assembly, he is the first to rally to the Th