Two kinds of men make up the recruits, and it is especially on their crude brains that we have to admire the effect of the revolutionary dogma.

First, there are the Federates of the South, lusty fellows, former soldiers or old bandits, deserters, bohemians, and scoundrels of all lands and from every source, who, after finishing their work at Marseilles and Avignon, have come to Paris to begin over again. "Triple nom de Dieu!" exclaims one of them, "I didn't come a hundred and eighty leagues to restrain myself from sticking a hundred and eighty heads on the end of my pike!"3180 Accordingly, they form in themselves a special, permanent, resident body, allowing no one to divert them from their adopted occupation. "They turn a deaf ear to the excitements of spurious patriotism";3181 they are not going to be sent off to the frontier. Their post is at the capital; they have sworn "to defend liberty"; neither before nor after September make them deviate from this end. When, after having drawn money on every treasury and under every pretext, they at last consent to leave Paris, it is only on the condition that they return to Marseilles. Their operations are limited to the interior of France, and only against political adversaries. But their zeal in this field is only the greater; it is their band which, first of all, takes the twenty-four priests from the town hall, and, on the way, begins the massacre with their own hands.3182

Then there are the "enragÉs" of the Paris proletariat, a few of them clerks or shopkeepers, most of them artisans of all the trades; locksmiths, masons, butchers, wheelwrights, tailors, shoemakers, waggoners, especially dockers working in the harbor, market-porters, and, above all, journeymen and apprentices of all kinds, in short, manual workers on the bottom of the social ladder.3183 Among these we find beasts of prey, murderers by instinct, or simple robbers.3184 Others who, like one of the disciples of AbbÉ Sicard, whom he loves and venerates, confess that they never stirred except under constraint.3185 Others are simple machines, who let themselves be driven: for instance the local forwarding agent, a good sort of man, but who, dragged along, plied with liquor, and then made crazy, kills twenty priests for his share, and dies at the end of the month, still drinking, unable to sleep, frothing at the mouth and trembling in every limb.3186 And finally the few, who, with good intentions, are carried away by the bloody whirlwind, and, struck by the grace of Revolution, become converted to the religion of murder. One of them a certain Grapin, deputized by his section to save two prisoners, seats himself alongside of Maillard, sits in judgment at his side during sixty-three hours, and demands a certificate from him.3187 The majority, however, entertain the same opinions as the cook, who, after taking the Bastille, finding himself on the spot and having cut off M. de Launay's head, regards it as a "patriotic" action, and deems himself worthy of a "medal for having destroyed a monster." These people are not common criminals, but well-disposed persons living in the vicinity, who, seeing a public service established in their neighborhood,3188 issue from their homes to give a hand; their degree of probity is about the same as we find nowadays among people of the same condition in life.

At the outset, especially, no one considers filling his pockets. At the Abbaye prison, they come honorably and place on the table in the room of the civil committee the purses and jewels of the dead.3189 If they appropriate anything to themselves, it is shoes to cover their naked feet, and then only after asking permission. As to pay, all rough work deserves it, and, moreover, between them and their recruiters, the answer is obvious. With nothing but their own hands to rely on, they cannot work for nothing,3190 and, as the work is hard, they ought to be paid double time. They require six francs a day, besides their meals and as much wine as they want. One caterer alone furnished the men at the Abbaye with 346 pints:3191 when working incessantly day and night with a task like that of sewer-cleaners and miners, nothing else will keep their courage up.—Food and wages must be paid for by the nation; the work is done for the nation, and, naturally, on interposing formalities, they get out of temper and betake themselves to Roland, to the City treasurer, to the section committees, to the Committee of Supervision,3192 murmuring, threatening, and showing their bloody pikes. That is the evidence of having done their work well. They boast of it to PÉtion, impress upon him how "just and attentive" they were,3193 their discernment, the time given to the work, so many days and so many hours; they ask only for what is "due to them"; when the treasurer, on paying them, demands their names, they give them without the slightest hesitation. Those who escort a dismissed prisoner; masons, hairdressers, federates, require no recompense but "something to drink"; "we do not carry on this business for money," they say; "here is your friend; he promised us a glass of brandy, which we will take and then go back to our work."3194—Outside of their business they possess the expansive cordiality and ready sensitivity of the Parisian workman. At the Abbaye, a federate,3195 on learning that the prisoners had been kept without water for twenty-six hours, wanted to "exterminate" the turnkey for his negligence, and would have done it if "the prisoners themselves had not pleaded for him." On the acquittal of a prisoner, the guards and the butchers, everybody, embraces him with enthusiasm; Weber is greeted again and again for more than a hundred yards; they cheer to excess. Each wants to escort the prisoner; the cab of Mathon de la Varenne is invaded; "they perch themselves on the driver's seat, at the doors, on top, and behind."3196—A few even display strange fits of tact. Two of the butchers, still covered with blood, who lead the chevalier de Bertrand home, insist on going up stairs with him to witness the joy of his family; after their terrible task they need the relaxation of tender emotion. On entering, they wait discreetly in the drawing-room until the ladies have been prepared; the happiness of which they are witnesses melts them; they remain some time, refuse money, expressing their gratitude and depart.3197—Still more extraordinary are the vestiges of innate politeness. A market-porter desirous of embracing a discharged prisoner, first asks his permission. Old "hags," who had just clapped their hands at the slaughtering, stop the guards "violently" as they hurry Weber along, in white silk stockings, across pools of blood: "Hey, guard, look out, you are making Monsieur walk in the gutter!"3198 In short, they display the permanent qualities of their race and class; they seem to be neither above nor below the average of their brethren, Most of them, probably, would never have done anything very monstrous had a rigid police, like that which maintains order in ordinary times, kept them in their shops or at home in their lodgings or in their tap-rooms.

But, in their own eyes, they are so many kings; "sovereignty is committed to their hands,"3199 their powers are unlimited; whoever doubts this is a traitor, and is properly punished; he must be put out of the way; while, for royal councillors, they take maniacs and rascals, who, through monomania or calculation, have preach all that to them: just like a Negro king surrounded by white slave-dealers, who urge him into raids, and by black sorcerers, who prompt him to massacre. How could such a man with such guides, and in such an office, be retarded by the formalities of justice, or by the distinctions of equity? Equity and justice are the elaborate products of civilization, while he is merely a political savage. In vain are the innocent recommended to his mercy!

"Look here, citizen,31100 do you, too, want to put us to sleep? Suppose that those cursed Prussian and Austrian beggars were in Paris, would they pick out the guilty? Wouldn't they strike right and left, the same as the Swiss did on the 10th of August? Very well, I can't make speeches, but I don't put anybody to sleep. I say, I am the father of a family—I have a wife and five children that I mean to leave here for the section to look after, while I go and fight the enemy. But I have no intention that while I am gone these villains here in prison, and other villains who would come and let them out, should cut the throats of my wife and children. I have three boys who I hope will some day be more useful to their country than those rascals you want to save. Anyhow, all that can be done is to let 'em out and give them arms, and we will fight 'em on an equal footing. Whether I die here or on the frontiers, scoundrels would kill me all the same, and I will sell my life dearly. But, whether it is done by me or by someone else, the prison shall be cleaned out of those cursed beggars, there, now!" At this a general cry is heard: "He's right! No mercy! Let us go in!"

All that the crowd assent to is an improvised tribunal, the reading of the jailer's register, and prompt judgment; condemnation and slaughter must follow, according to the famous Commune, which simplifies things—There is another simplification still more formidable, which is the condemnation and slaughter by categories. Any title suffices, Swiss, priest, officer, or servant of the King, "the 'worms' on the civil list"; wherever a lot of priests or Swiss are found, it is not worth while to have a trial, the throats of the lot can be slit.—Reduced to this, the operation is adapted to the operators; the arms of the new sovereign are as strong as his mind is weak, and, through an inevitable adaptation, he degrades his work to the level of his faculties.

His work, in its turn, degrades and perverts him. No man, and especially a man of the people, rendered pacific by an old civilization, can, with impunity, become at one stroke both sovereign and executioner. In vain does he work himself up against the condemned and heap insults on them to augment his fury;31101 I he is dimly conscious of committing a great crime, and his soul, like that of Macbeth, "is full of scorpions." Through a terrible tightening up, he hardens himself against the inborn, hereditary impulses of humanity; these resist while he becomes exasperated, and, to stifle them, there is no other way but to "gorge himself on horrors,"31102 by adding murder to murder. For murder, especially as he practices it, that is to say, with a naked sword on defense-less people, introduces into his animal and moral machine two extraordinary and disproportionate emotions which unsettle it, on the one hand, a sensation of omnipotence exercised uncontrolled, unimpeded, without danger, on human life, on throbbing flesh31103 and, on the other hand, an interest in bloody and diversified death, accompanied with an ever new series of contortions and exclamations;31104 formerly, in the Roman circus, one could not tear one's self away from it; the spectacle once seen, the spectator always returned to see it again. Just at this time each prison court is a circus, and what makes it worse is that the spectators are likewise actors.—Thus, for them, two fiery liquids mingle together in one draught. To moral intoxication is added physical intoxication, wine in profusion, bumpers at every pause, revelry over corpses; and we see rising out of this unnatural creature the demon of Dante, at once brutal and refined, not merely a destroyer, but, again, an executioner, instigator and calculator of suffering, and radiant and joyous over the evil it accomplishes.

They are merry; they dance around each new corpse, and sing the carmagnole;31105 they arouse the people of the quarter "to amuse them," and that they may have their share of "the fine fÊte."31106 Benches are arranged for "gentlemen" and others for "ladies": the latter, with greater curiosity, are additionally anxious to contemplate at their ease "the aristocrats" already slain; consequently, lights are required, and one is placed on the breast of each corpse.—Meanwhile, the slaughter continues, and is carried to perfection. A butcher at the Abbaye31107 complains that "the aristocrats die too quick, and that those only who strike first have the pleasure of it"; henceforth they are to be struck with the backs of the swords only, and made to run between two rows of their butchers, like soldiers formerly running a gauntlet. If there happens to be well-known person, it is agreed to take more care in prolonging the torment. At La Force, the Federates who come for M. de RulhiÈres swear "with frightful imprecations that they will cut the head of anyone daring to end his sufferings with a thrust of his pike"; the first thing is to strip him naked, and then, for half an hour, with the flat of their sabers, they cut and slash him until he drips with blood and is "skinned to his entrails."—All the monstrous instincts who grovels chained up in the dregs of the human heart, not only cruelty with its bared fangs,31108 but also the slimier desires, unite in fury against women whose noble or infamous repute makes them conspicuous; against Madame de Lamballe, the Queen's friend; against Madame Desrues, widow of the famous poisoner; against the flower-girl of the Palais-Royal, who, two years before, had mutilated her lover, a French guardsman, in a fit of jealousy. Ferocity here is associated with lewdness to add debasement to torture, while life is violated through outrages on modesty. In Madame de Lamballe, killed too quickly, the libidinous butchers could outrage only a corpse, but for the widow,31109 and especially the flower-girl, they revive, like so many Neros, the fire-circle of the Iroquois.31110—From the Iroquois to the cannibal, the gulf is small, and some of them jump across it. At the Abbaye, an old soldier named Damiens, buries his saber in the side of the adjutant-general la Leu, thrusts his hand into the opening, tears out the heart "and puts it to his mouth as if to eat it"; "the blood," says an eye-witness, "trickled from his mouth and formed a sort of mustache for him."31111 At La Force, Madame de Lamballe is carved up. What Charlot, the wig-maker, who carried her head did, I to it, should not be described. I merely state that another wretch, in the Rue Saint-Antoine, bore off her heart and "ate it."31112

They kill and they drink, and drink and kill again. Weariness comes and stupor begins. One of them, a wheelwright's apprentice, has dispatched sixteen for his share; another "has labored so hard at this merchandise as to leave the blade of his saber sticking in it"; "I was more tired," says a Federate, "with two hours pulling limbs to pieces, right and left, than any mason who for two days has been plastering a wall."31113 The first excitement is gone, and now they strike automatically.31114 Some of them fall asleep stretched out on benches. Others, huddled together, sleep off the fumes of their wine, removed on one side. The exhalation from the carnage is so strong that the president of the civil committee faints in his chair,31115 the fumes of the tavern blending with those from the charnel-house. A heavy, dull state of torpor gradually overcomes their clouded brains, the last glimmerings of reason dying out one by one, like the smoky lights on the already cold breasts of the corpses lying around them. Through the stupor spreading over the faces of butchers and cannibals, we see appearing that of the idiot. It is the revolutionary idiot, in which all conceptions, save two, have vanished, two fixed, rudimentary, and mechanical ideas, one destruction and the other that of public safety. With no others in his empty head, these blend together through an irresistible attraction, and the effect proceeding from their contact may be imagined. "Is there anything else to do?" asks one of these butchers in the deserted court.—"If there is no more to do," reply a couple of women at the gate, "you will have to think of something,"31116 and, naturally, this is done.

As the prisons are to be cleaned out, it is as well to clean them all out, and do it at once. After the Swiss, priests, the aristocrats, and the "white-skinned gentlemen," there remain convicts and those confined through the ordinary channels of justice, robbers, assassins, and those sentenced to the galleys in the Conciergerie, in the ChÂtelet, and in the Tour St. Bernard, with branded women, vagabonds, old beggars, and boys confined in BicÊtre and the SalpÉtriÈre. They are good for nothing, cost something to feed,31117 and, probably, cherish evil designs. At the SalpÉtriÈre, for example, the wife of Desrues, the poisoner, is, assuredly, like himself, "cunning, wicked, and capable of anything"; she must be furious at being in prison; if she could, she would set fire to Paris; she must have said so; she did say it31118—one more sweep of the broom.—This time, as the job is more foul, the broom is wielded by fouler hands; among those who seize the handle are the frequenters of jails. The butchers at the Abbaye prison, especially towards the close, had already committed thefts;31119 here, at the ChÂtelet and the Conciergerie prisons, they carry away "everything which seems to them suitable," even to the clothes of the dead, prison sheets and coverlids, even the small savings of the jailers, and, besides this, they enlist their cronies. "Out of 36 prisoners set free, many were assassins and robbers, the killers attached them to their group. There were also 75 women, confined in part for larceny, who promised to faithfully serve their liberators." Later on, indeed, these are to become, at the Jacobin and Cordeliers clubs, the tricoteuses (knitters) who fill their tribunes.31120—At the SalpÉtriÈre prison, "all the pimps of Paris, former spies,... libertines, the rascals of France and all Europe, prepare beforehand for the operation," and rape alternates with massacre.31121—Thus far, at least, slaughter has been seasoned with robbery, and the grossness of eating and drinking; at BicÉtre, however, it is crude butchery, the carnivorous instinct alone satisfying itself. Among other prisoners are 43 youths of the lowest class, from 17 to 19 years of age, placed there for correction by their parents, or by those to whom they are bound;31122 one need only look at them to see that they are genuine Parisian scamps, the apprentices of vice and misery, the future recruits for the reigning band, and these the band falls on, beating them to death with clubs. At this age life is tenacious, and, no life being harder to take, it requires extra efforts to dispatch them. "In that corner," said a jailer, "they made a mountain of their bodies. The next day, when they were to be buried, the sight was enough to break one's heart. One of them looked as if he were sleeping like one of God's angels, but the rest were horribly mutilated."31123—Here, man has sunk below himself, down into the lowest strata of the animal kingdom, lower that the wolf; for wolves do not strangle their young.