nsiderations; but I affirm,
with entire certainty, that they have deceived themselves. In the
sanguinary drama that has been unrolled before your eyes, the atrocities
had a quite different source from the sentiments common to the
barbarians that were swarming in the dregs of society and always ready
to soil it with every crime; in plainer words, it is not to the
unfortunate people who have neither property, nor capital, living by the
work of their hands, to the _proletaires_, that we are to impute the
deplorable incidents which marked Bailly's last moments. To put forward
an opinion so remote from received opinions, is imposing on one's self
the duty of proving its truth.

After his condemnation, our colleague exclaimed, says La Fayette: "I die
for the sitting of the Jeu de Paume, and not for the fatal day at the
Champ de Mars." I do not here intend to expound these mysterious words
in the glimpses they give us by a half-light; but, whatever meaning we
may attribute to them, it is evident that the sentiments and passions of
the lower class have no share in them; it is a point beyond discussion.

On reentering the Conciergerie, the evening before his death, Bailly
spoke of the efforts that must have been made to excite the passions of
the auditors, who followed the various phases of his trial. Factitious
excitement is always the produce of corruption. The working classes are
without money;, they then cannot have been the corruptors or direct
promoters of the distressing scenes of which Bailly complained.

The implacable enemies of the former President of the National Assembly
had procured for pay some auxiliaries among the turnkeys of the
Conciergerie. M. Beugnot informs us that when the venerable magistrate
was consigned to the gendarmes who were to conduct him to the Tribunal,
"these wretches pushed him violently, sending him from one to the other
like a drunken man, calling out: _Hold there, Bailly! Catch, Bailly,
there!_ and that they laughed and shouted at the grave demeanour the
philosopher maintained amidst the insults of those cannibals."

To confirm my statement that these violences (in comparison with which,
in truth, those of the Champ de Mars lose their virulence,) were
fomented by pay, I have more than the formal declaration of our
colleague's fellow prisoner. For in fact I find that no other prisoner
or convict underwent such treatment; not even the man called the
Admiral, when he was taken to the Concie