BEHEADING. DEAD NAKED BODIES. BUT to return to those "active citizens, whom aristocratic insolence has stiled _sans-culottes, brigands_."[28] [Note 28: These are the words of a French newspaper, called, _Journal universel, ou Revolutions des Royaumes, par J. P. Audarin_. No. 994, for Sunday, 12 August, 4th year of Liberty, under the motto of Liberty, Patriotism and Truth.] On Sunday, they dragged a man to the _Hotel de Ville_, before a magistrate, to be tried, for having stolen something in the _Tuileries_ as they said. He was accordingly tried, searched, and nothing being found on him, was acquitted; _n'importe_, said these citizens, we must have his head for all that, for we caught him in the act of stealing. They laid him on his back on the ground, and in the presence of the judge, who had acquitted him, they sawed off his head in about a quarter of an hour, with an old notched scythe, and then gave it to the boys to carry about on a pike, leaving the carcase in the justice-hall.[29] [Note 29: This is inserted on the authority of a lady, a native of the French West-India isles, who resided in the same hotel with me, and who, with two gentlemen who attended her, were witnesses to this transaction, which they told to whoever chose to listen.] At the corner of almost every chief street is a black marble slab, inserted in the wall about ten feet high, on which is cut in large letters, gilt, _Loix et actes de l'autorite publique_ (laws and acts of the public authority) and underneath are pasted the daily and sometimes hourly decrees and notices of the National Assembly. One of these acquainted the citizens, that _Mandat_ (the former commander-general of the national guards) had yesterday undergone the punishment due to his crimes; that is to say, the people had cut off his head. During several days, after _the day I_ procured all the Paris newspapers, about twenty, but all on the same side, as the people had put the editors of the aristocratic papers, _hors d'etat de parler_ (prevented their speaking) by beheading one or two of them, and destroying all their presses. They, about this time, hanged two money changers (people who gave paper for _louis d'or_, crowns, and guineas) under the idea that the money was sent to the emigrants.