The Abbaye and La Force were the next objects of attack. Here there was some mockery of judicial observances. The form of trial was brief enough; a few armed ruffians constituted themselves a tribunal, before which the prisoners were led one by one. The investigation seldom went much beyond asking the name of the person, and referring to the charges alleged against him in the gaoler’s register. If these afforded ground for the suspicion of incivism, and the judges, as was almost always the case, decreed his death, their sentence, to prevent the dangerous efforts of despair, was conveyed in the equivocal terms, “Give the prisoner freedom,” or, “Convey him to La Force,” if he were confined at the Abbaye, and _vice versâ_. He was then led from the room, and struck down, for the most part, before he reached the court–yard, with eager cruelty. Women as well as men mingled in this frightful scene, and inflicted the most loathsome indignities on the mangled bodies. These proceedings were virtually authorized and encouraged by the presence of deputies from the Commune, wearing the municipal scarf, but nominally charged to select and deliver those who were imprisoned for debt. Not content with this negative sanction, Billaud Varennes, who was one of them, openly stimulated the murderers, promising them not only the plunder of the dead bodies, but the further gratification of a louis per day, as the reward of their good service. And it appears from the records of the time, that this money was actually paid. Yet much of the trifling property found on the persons of the slain was delivered up, it is said, for the use of the state; as if the actors of these horrors, by some strange caprice, had professed to be really disinterested.