em," says a deputy,[33103]
"as if every sink in Paris and other great cities had been scoured to
find whatever was foul, the most hideous, and the most infected....
Ugly, cadaverous features, black or bronzed, surmounted with tufts
of greasy hair, and with eyes sunken half-way into the head.... They
belched forth with their nauseous breath the grossest insults amidst
sharp cries like those of carnivorous animals." Among them there can be
distinguished "the September murderers, whom" says an observer[33104]
in a position to know them, "I can compare to nothing but lazy tigers
licking their paws, growling and trying to find a few more drops of
blood just spilled, awaiting a fresh supply." Far from hiding away they
strut about and show themselves. One of them, Petit-Mamain, son of an
innkeeper at Bordeaux and a former soldier, "with a pale, wrinkled face,
sharp eyes and bold air, wearing a scimitar at his side and pistols at
his belt," promenades the Palais-Royal[33105] "accompanied or followed
at a distance by others of the same species," and "taking part in every
conversation." "It was me," he says, "who ripped open La Lamballe and
tore her heart out.... All I have to regret is that the massacre
was such a short one. But we shall have it over again. Only wait
a fortnight!" and, thereupon, he calls out his own name in
defiance.--Another, who has no need of stating his well-known name,
Maillard, president of the Abbaye massacres, has his head-quarters at
the cafe Chretien,[33106] Rue Favart, from which, guzzling drams of
brandy, "he dispatches his mustached men, sixty-eight cutthroats, the
terror of the surrounding region;" we see them in coffee-houses and
in the foyers of the theaters "drawing their huge sabers," and telling
inoffensive people: "I am Mr. so and so; if you look at me with contempt
I'll cut you down!--A few months more and, under the command of one
of Henriot's aids, a squad of this band will rob and toast (chauffer)
peasants in the environment of Corbeil and Meaux.[33107] In the
meantime, even in Paris, they toast, rob, and rape on grand occasions.
On the 25th and 26th of February, 1793,[33108] they pillage wholesale
and retail groceries, "save those belonging to Jacobins," in the Rue des
Lombards, Rue des Cinq-Diamants, Rue Beaurepaire, Rue Montmartre, in
the Ile Saint-Louis, on the Port-au-Ble, before the Hotel-de-ville, Rue
Saint-Jacques, in short, twelve hundred of them, not alone articles of
prime nece