evolt, so as to get rid of them in a mass, or, at least, to
justify the increasing rapid strokes of the guillotine. They are huddled
together in tens, twenties and thirties, in one room at La Force, "eight
in a chamber, fourteen feet square," where all the beds touch, and many
overlap each other, where two out of the eight inmates are obliged to
sleep on the floor, where vermin swarm, where the closed sky-lights,
the standing tub, and the crowding together of bodies poisons the
atmosphere.--In many places, the proportion of the sick and dying is
greater than in the hold of a slave-ship. "Of ninety individuals with
whom I was shut up two months ago," writes a prisoner at Strasbourg,
"sixty-six were taken to the hospital in the space of eight days."[4118]
In the prisons of Nantes, 3000 out 13,000 prisoners die of typhoid fever
and of the rot in two months.[4119] 400 priests[4120] confined on a
vessel between decks, in the roadstead of Aix, stowed on top of each
other, wasted with hunger, eaten up by vermin, suffocated for lack of
air, half-frozen, beaten, mocked at, and constantly threatened with
death, suffer still more than Negroes in a slave-hold; for, through
interest in his freight, the captain of the slaver tries to keep
his human consignment in good health, whilst, through revolutionary
fanaticism, the crew of the Aix vessel detests its cargo of
"black-frocks" and would gladly send them to the bottom.--According
to this system, which, up to Thermidor 9, grows worse and worse,
imprisonment becomes a torture, oftentimes mortal, slower and more
painful than the guillotine, and to such an extent that, to escape it,
Champfort opens his veins and Condorcet swallows poison.[4121]The third
expedient consists of murder, with or without trial.--178 tribunals,
of which 40 are ambulatory, pronounce in every part of the territory
sentences of death which are immediately executed on the spot.[4122]
Between April 6, 1793, and Thermidor 9, year II., (July 27th, 1794)
that of Paris has 2,625 persons guillotined,[4123] while the provincial
judges do as much work as the Paris judges. In the small town of Orange
alone, they guillotine 331 persons. In the single town of Arras they
have 299 men and 93 women guillotined. At Nantes, the revolutionary
tribunals and military committees have, on the average, 100 persons
a day guillotined, or shot, in all 1,971. In the city of Lyons
the revolutionary committee admit 1,684, while Cadillot, one o