Each act of usurpation of power by the Jacobins had alienated a section. The nobles and the clergy, many of whom had at first gone heartily with the early reformers, had shrunk back appalled when they saw that religion and monarchy were menaced. The bourgeoisie, who had made the Revolution, were already to a man against it; the Girondists, the leaders of the third estate, had fallen away, and over their heads the axe was already hanging. The Revolution had no longer a friend in France, save among the lowest, the basest, and the most ignorant. And now, by the massacres of the 2d of September, the republic of France was to stand forth in the eyes of Europe as a blood-stained monster, the enemy, not of kings only, but of humanity in general. Thus the crowd following the Marseillais was composed almost entirely of the scum of Paris, wretches who had long been at war with society, who hated the rich, hated the priests, hated all above them--men who had suffered so much that they had become wild beasts, who were the products of that evil system of society which had now been overthrown. The greater proportion of them were in the pay of the Commune, for, two days before, all the unemployed had been enrolled as the army of the Commune. Thus there was no repetition before the Abbaye of the cries of shame which had been heard in front of the Maine. The shouts of the Marseillais were taken up and re-echoed by the mob. Savage cries, curses, and shouts for vengeance filled the air; many were armed, and knives and bludgeons, swords and pikes, were brandished or shaken. Blood had been tasted, and all the savage instincts were on fire. "This is horrible, Henri!" Victor de Gisons exclaimed. "I feel as if I were in a nightmare, not that any nightmare could compare in terror to this. Look at those hideous faces--faces of men debased by crime, sodden with drink, degraded below the level of brutes, exulting in the thought of blood, lusting for murder; and to think that these creatures are the masters of France. Great Heavens! What can come of it in the future? What is going to take place now?" "Organized massacre, I fear, Victor. What seemed incredible, impossible, is going to take place; there is to be a massacre of the prisoners." They had by this time reached the monastery of the Carmelites, now converted into a prison. Here a large number of priests had been collected. The Marseillais entered, and the prisoners were called by name to assemble in the garden. First the Archbishop of Arles was murdered; then they fell upon the others and hewed them down. The Bishops of Saintes and Beauvais were among the slain, and the assassins did not desist until the last prisoner in the Carmelites had been hacked to pieces. Graves had already been dug near the Barrier Saint Jacques and carts were waiting to convey the corpses there, showing how carefully the preparations for the massacre had been made.