allowed to consult his partners, and, as they are
not in prison, they refuse. Lemoal, on his side, is anxious to receive
the money for his note, while poor Davilliers, "struck with terror by
nocturnal arrests," and seeing that Lemoal is always on the top of the
ladder, concludes to pay; at first, he gives him thirty thousand livres,
and next, the charges, amounting in all to forty-one thousand livres,
when, being at the end of his resources, he begs and entreats to have
his note returned to him. Lemoal, on this, considering the chicken as
entirely stripped, becomes mollified, and tears off in presence of his
debtor "the signature in full of the note," and, along with this, his
own receipts for partial payments underneath. But he carefully preserves
the note itself, for, thus mutilated, it will show, if necessary, that
he had not received anything, and that, through patriotism, he had
undoubtedly wished to force a contribution from a merchant, but,
finding him insolvent, had humanely canceled the written
obligation.[33116]--Such are the precautions taken in this business.
Others, less shrewd, rob more openly, among others the mayor, the seven
members of the military commission surnamed "the seven mortal sins,"
and especially their president, Lacombe, who, by promising releases,
extracts from eight or nine captives three hundred and fifty-nine
thousand six hundred livres.[33117] "Through such schemes," writes
a rigid Jacobin,[33118] "many of those who had been declared outlaws
returned to Bordeaux by paying; of the number who thus redeemed their
lives, some did not deserve to lose it, but, nevertheless, they were
threatened with execution if they did not consent to everything. But
material proofs of this are hard to obtain. These men now keep silent,
for fear, through open denunciation, of sharing in the penalty of the
traffickers in justice, and being unwilling to expose (anew) the life
they have preserved." In short, the plucked pigeon is mute, so as not
to attract attention, as well as to avoid the knife; and all the more,
because those who pluck him hold on to the knife and might, should he
cry out, dispatch him with the more celerity. Even if he makes no noise,
they sometimes dispatch him so as to stifle in advance any possible
outcry, which happened to the Duc du Chatelet and others. There is but
one mode of self-preservation[33119] and that is, "to settle with such
masters by installments, to pay them monthly, like w