tee, denouncing it as flagrantly
illegal, and reminding them that it was illegal to remove any prisoner,
no matter by whose order, without such an order as might follow upon a
decision of the Tribunal.

The committee, intimidated by this firmness on the part of the President
of the Revolutionary Tribunal, dared not insist, and there the matter
remained.

When Carrier learnt of it the things he said were less than ever fit for
publication. He raved like a madman at the very thought that a quibbling
lawyer should stand in the very path of him, the august representative
of the Sacred People.

It had happened that fifty-three priests, who had been brought to Nantes
a few days before, were waiting in the sheds of the entrepot for prison
accommodation, so that their names did not yet appear upon any of the
prison registers. As a solatium to his wounded feelings, he ordered his
friends of the Marat Company to get rid of them.

Lamberty, the leader of the Marats, asked him how it should be done.

"How?" he croaked. "Not so much mystery, my friend. Fling the swine into
the water, and so let's be rid of them. There will be plenty of their
kind left in France."

But he seems to have explained himself further, and what precisely were
his orders, and how they were obeyed, transpires from a letter which
he wrote to the Convention, stating that those fifty-three wretched
priests, "being confined in a boat on the Loire, were last night
swallowed up by the river." And he added the apostrophe, "What a
revolutionary torrent is the Loire!"

The Convention had no illusions as to his real meaning; and when Carrier
heard that his letter had been applauded by the National Assembly, he
felt himself encouraged to break down all barriers of mere legality
that might obstruct his path. And, after all, what the Revolutionary
Committee as a body--intimidated by Phelippes--dared not do could be
done by his faithful and less punctilious friends of the Marat Company.

This Marat Company, the police of the Revolutionary Committee, enrolled
from the scourings of Nantes' sans-culottism, and captained by a ruffian
named Fleury, had been called into being by Carrier himself with the
assistance of Goullin.

On the night of the 24th Frimaire of the year III (December 14, 1793,
old style), which was a Saturday, Fleury mustered some thirty of his
men, and took them to the Cour des Comptes, where they were awaited by
Goullin, Bachelier, Grandmaison, an