The mere business of killing went forward until numbers had lost their significance, and the lists of the dead were but approximately reckoned. They are all set down in black and white, and may still be read—so many killed "in the heap" (_en masse_), so many "after judgment" (_après jugement_)—but the figures have never been proved; and one seeks in vain to reckon the total, after the "three hundred families belonging to the Faubourg St. Germain," who were "thrown into the Abbaye in a night"; and the "cartload of young girls, of whom the oldest was not eighteen," and who, "dressed all in white in the tumbril, looked like a basket of lilies." After this batch, were guillotined all the nuns of the convent of Montmartre. Then there were the Swiss Guards, "remnants of the 10th of August," to whom Maillard said; "Gentlemen, you may find mercy outside, but I am afraid we cannot grant it to you here." The youngest of them, "in a blue frock-coat," elected to go first. "Since we must die," he said, "let me show the way"; then, dashing on his hat, he presented himself at the door where the butchers stood ready to receive him; a double row of them,—sabre, bayonet, hatchet, or pike in hand. For a moment he looked at them, quite coolly; then, seeing that all was prepared, he threw himself between their ranks, and "fell beneath a thousand blows." [Illustration: THE GALLANT SWISS.] When the killers began to flag, brandy mixed with gunpowder was served to them. A woman passes, carrying a basket of hot rolls; they beg them of her, and the bread, before being eaten, is "soaked in the wounds of the still breathing victims."[19] The brigands of the Abbaye were not more than from thirty to forty in number. Amongst them, says Nougaret, "one youth, mounted on a post, distinguished himself by his ferocity in killing. He said that he had lost his two brothers on the 10th of August, and meant to avenge them. He boasted of having cut down fifty to his own weapon. Another brigand prided himself on a total of two hundred!" Footnote 19: Nougaret. Women looked on, adds the same authority, "sitting in carts on piles of dead bodies, like washerwomen on dirty linen. Others flung themselves upon the corpses, and tore them with their teeth, danced round them, and kicked them. Some of these Furies cut off the ears of the dead, and pinned them on their bosoms."