ore necessary for it to preserve the liberty of
commerce and the supply of flour. A mob, composed of men and women of
the adjacent villages, assembling at the sound of the tocsin, marched
upon the city one market-day, preceded by drums, armed with guns and
pitchforks, in order to carry off the grain by force from the
proprietors, divide it amongst themselves, and to exterminate, as they
declared, the monopolists, amongst whom sinister voices mingled in low
tones the name of Simoneau. The national guard disappeared, a detachment
of one hundred men of the eighteenth regiment of cavalry were at
Etampes, and the sole force at the Maire's disposal.

The officer answered for these soldiers _as for himself_. After long
conversations with the seditious, to bring them back to reason and the
law, Simoneau returned to the _maison commune_, ordered the red flag to
be unfurled, proclaimed martial law, and then advanced upon the rebels,
surrounded by the municipal body, and in the centre of the armed force;
on reaching the square of the town, the crowd surrounded and cut off the
detachment. The troopers left the Maire exposed--not one drew his sword
in his defence. In vain did he summon them, in the name of the law, and
by the weapons they wore, to render aid to the magistrate against
assassins--in vain did he seize the bridle of one of the horsemen near
him, crying, "_Help, my friends_."

Struck by blows of pitchforks and guns, at the moment when he appealed
to the soldiery, he fell, shot, grasping in his hands the bridle of the
cowardly trooper whom he was entreating: the fellow, in order to
disengage himself, struck with the back of his sabre the arm of the
Maire already dead, and left his body to the insults of the people. The
miscreants, remaining in possession of the carcase, brutally mangled the
palpitating limbs, and deliberated together as to cutting off the head.
The leaders made their followers defile passing over the body of the
Maire, and trampling in his blood. Then they went away beating their
drums, and went to get drunk in the suburbs; and the taking away the
grain, the apparent motive of the riot, was neglected in the moment of
triumph. There was no pillage--either the blood made the people forget
their hunger, or their hunger was but the pretext for assassination.

III.

At the moment when all was thus crumbling to pieces round the throne, a
man, celebrated by the vast part attributed to him in the common ruin