The escapes were not many. Abbé Sicard, the benevolent founder of the Deaf-and-Dumb Institute, was set free on the earnest petition in writing of one of his pupils. Beaumarchais, author of the _Mariage de Figaro_, evaded the clutches of the judges after a terrible period of suspense in the Abbaye. The old Marquis de Sombreuil was saved by his daughter. She clung to his neck, imploring the cut-throats to spare him to her. "Say, then," said one of them, dipping a cup into the blood at his feet: "Wilt thou drink _this_?" The brave girl gulped it down; the mob threw up their weapons with a roar of applause, and opened out a way for both through their dripping ranks. But few fared as these did. President Maillard, of the grey coat, who was so well satisfied with Saint-Méard, did not release, perhaps, one in fifty amongst the accused at the Abbaye. He is accused of "carrying about heads, and cutting up dead bodies." Billaud-Varennes went about from group to group of the assassins who were massed in parties, encouraged them in the name of the tribunal, and promised that each man should be paid a louis for his "labour." A contemporary sketch depicts him delivering a speech on "a table of corpses" against the door of the Abbaye: "Citizens, you are slaughtering the enemies of France. You are doing your duty." Indiscriminate killing had been the legal order of the day. There was no question of the guillotine during the September massacres. Every citizen who could arm himself was a Samson by privilege of the prison judges; and popular justice, called "severe justice of the people," made the butcheries of September a people's fête. It was not so much an act of patriotism to assist in them as a dereliction of duty to hold aloof. The "Septemberers" have been condemned as cannibals; but they were common ratepayers of Paris to whom the government of the day offered money to kill as many "enemies of the republic" as should be delivered to them. Most of these "enemies of the republic" were persons to whom the republic was scarcely known by name, and who asked only to be ignored by it. They were killed in batches during the September of '92, merely because they happened to be thrust out at one particular door of their prison. You came out at this door, and were received with cheers; you came out at the next door, and were hacked in pieces. Which door it was, depended upon the vote of the judges; and this, as a rule, was the determination of a moment. Saint-Méard's trial of an hour was one of the longest.