f the people," its
"plenary power to spread the example of the capital." Now, as 40,000
unsworn priests are condemned by the decree of August 26 to leave their
departments in a week and France in a fortnight, shall they be allowed
to depart? Eight thousand of them at Rouen, in obedience to the decree,
charter transports, which the riotous population of both sides of the
Seine prevent from leaving. Roland sees in his dispatches that in Rouen,
as elsewhere, they crowd the municipalities for their passports,[3281]
but that these are often refused. Better still, at Troyes; at Meaux, at
Lyons, at Dole, and in many other towns, the same thing is done as at
Paris; they are confined in particular houses or in prisons, at least,
provisionally, "for fear that they may congregate under the German
eagle"; so that, made rebellious and declared traitors in spite of
themselves, they may still remain in their pens subject to the knife.
As the exportation of specie is prohibited, those who have procured the
necessary coin are robbed of it on the frontier, while others, who fly
at all hazards, tracked like wild boars, or run down like hares, escape
like the bishop of Barral, athwart bayonets, or like the abbe Guillon,
athwart sabers, when they are not struck down, like the abbe Pescheur,
by the blows of a gun-stock.[3282]

It is soon dawn. The files are too numerous and too large; Roland finds
that, out of eighty-three, he can examine but fifty; he must hasten on;
leaving the East, his eyes again turn to the South.--On this side,
too, there are strange sights. On the 2nd of September, at
Chalons-sur-Marne[3283], M. Chanlaire, an octogenarian and deaf, is
returning, with his prayer-book under his arm, from the Mall, to which
he resorted daily to read his prayers. A number of Parisian volunteers
who meet him, seeing that he looks like a devotee, order him to shout,
"Vive la Liberte" Unable to understand them, he makes no reply. They
then seize him by the ears, and, not marching fast enough, they drag him
along; his old ears give way, and, excited by seeing blood, they cut off
his ears and nose, and thus, the poor old man dripping with blood,
they reach the Hotel-de-Ville. At this sight a notary, posted there as
sentinel, and who is a man of feeling, is horror-stricken and escapes,
while the other National Guards hasten to shut the iron gates. The
Parisians, still dragging along their captive, go to the district and
then to the department b