ull
sight. One by one the national agent, or the mayor, reprimands them in
the following language:

"You have been base enough to sign a fawning address to Louis XVI.,
the most odious and the vilest of tyrants, an ogre of the human species
guilty of every sort of crime and debauchery. You are hereby censured by
the people. You are moreover warned that on committing the first act
of incivism, or manifesting any anti-revolutionary conduct, the
surveillance of the constituted authorities will be extended to you in
the most energetic manner; the tribunals will show you less leniency and
the guillotine will insure prompt and imposing justice."

Each, called by name, receives in turn the threatened admonition,
and, descending from the tribune amidst hues and cries, all sign the
proces-verbal. But shame and guilt are often absent, and some of them do
not seem to be sufficiently penitent. Consequently, at the close of the
ceremony, the National Agent calls the attention of the assembly to
"the impudence manifested by certain aristocrats, so degraded that
even national justice fails to make them blush;" and the Revolutionary
Committee, "considering the indifference and derisive conduct of four
women and three men, just manifested in this assembly; considering the
necessity of punishing an inveterate aristocracy which seems to make
sport of corrective acts that bear only (sic) on morals, in a most
exemplary manner, decides that the seven delinquents "shall be put under
arrest, and confined in the jail of Sainte-Marie." The three who have
shown indifference, are to be confined three months; the four who have
shown derision, are to be confined until peace is restored. Besides
this, the decree of the National Agent and the minutes of the meeting
are to be printed and six thousand impressions struck off at the expense
of the signers, "the richest and most 'suspect,' "--a former treasurer
of France, a notary, a grocer, the wife of the former commandant of the
gendarmerie, a widow and another woman,--all, says the agent, "of very
solid wealth and aristocracy." "Bravo!" shouts the assembly, at this
witticism; applause is given and it sings "the national hymn." It is
nine o'clock in the evening. This public penitence lasts six hours and
the Jacobins of Montargis retire, proud of their work; having punished
as a public affront, an old and legal manifestation of respect for the
public magistrate; having sent either to the scaffold or to p