The prison massacres began with the Swiss, at the Abbaye. They knew what was coming. They were one hundred and fifty. A young officer led the way. He was very young and beautiful, and the murderers fell back. He folded his arms. The bayonets came nearer. He rushed forward, grasped five or six of the bayonets in his arms, and fell upon their points. They all died—their commander, one Major Redding being the last. He said he would see his men out. There were not enough wagons to carry the bodies to the catacombs, so they were heaped up until the return of the tumbrils. Benches were set for women to see these massacres, and they and their children danced round the dead bodies. At the “Abbey” prison the prisoners were shot down in the chapel, and while two priests, eighty and white-haired, were preparing them for death. Some anticipated execution by suicide. One Sombreuil, a prisoner, was condemned to death, and he was loosed to the mob. Bayonets were at his breast, when his daughter, who was waiting in the midst of the murderers, flung herself before him and asked for his life. The crowd accorded it upon one condition—that she should drink a glass of blood, then flowing from one of the dying. This she did, and saved him. Another father and daughter, the Cazottes, left the prison together—he condemned, she free. But the daughter cried that she would die with him. So they spared both lives. So far, the national madness had not destroyed pity for women. The King’s first gentleman, one Thierri, being pierced by a pike, cried, “God save the King!” and died, waving his hat as he was transfixed to the woodwork to which he clung. A deputy of the National Assembly came to one of the prisons, to claim two prisoners; whom obtaining, as he passed from the prison, the murderers, eating as they sat on the bodies of their victims, asked him, “Are you tired of life?” “No.” “Then see the heart of an aristocrat!” The speaker tore the heart from the gaping breast of the dead man upon which he was coolly seated. Yet these murderers refused all recompense. The first bands were men of comparative education; but, not being bred butchers, they soon sickened at the task, and left it to be continued by men of more iron nerves than theirs. Blood had by this time, drenched nine prisons. From one alone, the tumbrils had removed one hundred and ninety bodies. Sixty assassins; this was the number to be seen at each prison door, waiting for the blood of the aristocrats.