patriotic at heart, and of young _bourgeois_ with generous aspirations and indomitable courage--never united for an instant with the scoundrels recruited by Maillard from every kennel in the capital. While the hired assassins of the Committee of Surveillance established in the prisons what Vergniaud called a butcher's shop for human flesh, the true populace was assembled on the Champ-de-Mars, and before the enlistment booths; it was offering its purest blood for the country; it would have blushed to shed that of helpless unfortunates."[1] In 1871, the murder of hostages and {361} the burning of monuments was no more approved by the population than the massacres in the prisons were in 1792. The crimes were committed at both epochs by a mere handful of individuals. The great majority of the people were guilty merely of apathy and fear. The hideous tableau surpasses the most lugubrious conceptions of Dante's sombre imagination. Paris is a hell. From August 29, it is like a torpid Oriental town. The whole city is in custody, like a criminal whose limbs are held while he is being searched and put in irons. Every house is inspected by the agents of the Commune. A knock at the door makes the inmates tremble. The denunciation of an enemy, a servant, a neighbor, is a death sentence. People scarcely dare to breathe. Neither running water nor solid earth is free. The parapets of quays, the arches of bridges, the bathing and washing boats are bristling with sentries. Everything is surrounded. There is no refuge. Three thousand suspected persons are taken out of houses, and crowded into prisons. The hunt begins anew the following day. The programme of massacres is arranged. The Communal Council of Surveillance has minutely regulated everything. The price of the actual work is settled. The personnel of cut-throats is at its post. Danton has furnished the executioners; Manuel, the victims. All is ready. The bloody drama can begin. On September 2, Danton said to the Assembly: "The tocsin about to sound is not an alarm signal; it {362} is a charge upon the enemies of the country. To vanquish them, gentlemen, all that is needed is boldness, and again boldness, and always boldness." Two days before, he had been still more explicit. "The 10th of August," said he, "divided us into republicans and royalists; the first few in number, the second many...; we must make the royalists afraid." A frightful gesture, a horizontal gesture, sufficed to express his meaning.