necessary to sound the alarm bell, and all that was necessary was that they should remain quiet. Accordingly he is set down as being in league with the brigands, and besides this he is a monopolist, and a buyer of standing crops. The peasants lead him off; along with his son-in-law, M. de Montesson, to the neighboring village, where there are judges. On the way "they dragged their victims on the ground, pummeled them, trampled on them, spit in their faces, and besmeared them with filth." M. de Montesson is shot, while M. Cureau is killed by degrees; a carpenter cuts off the two heads with a double-edged ax, and children bear them along to the sound of drums and violins. Meanwhile, the judges of the place, brought by force, draw up an official report stating the finding of thirty louis and several bills of the Banque d'Escompte in the pockets of M. de Cureau, on the discovery of which a shout of triumph is set up: this evidence proves that they were going to buy up the standing wheat!--Such is the course of popular justice. Now that the Third-Estate has become the nation, every mob thinks that it has the right to pronounce sentences, which it carries out, on lives and on possessions. These explosions are isolated in the western, central and southern provinces; the conflagration, however, is universal in the east. On a strip of ground from thirty to fifty leagues broad, extending from the extreme north down to Provence. Alsace, Franche-Comté, Burgundy, Mâconnais, Beaujolais, Auvergne, Viennois, Dauphiny, the whole of this territory resembles a continuous mine which explodes at the same time. The first column of flame which shoots up is on the frontiers of Alsace and Franche-Comté, in the vicinity of Belfort and Vésoul, a feudal district, in which the peasant, over-burdened with taxes, bears the heavier yoke with greater impatience. An instinctive argument is going on in his mind without his knowing it. "The good Assembly and the good King want us to be happy, suppose we help them! They say that the King has already relieved us of the taxes, suppose we relieve ourselves of paying rents! Down with the nobles! They are no better than the tax-collectors!"--On the 16th of July, the chateau of Sancy, belonging to the Princesses de Beaufremont, is sacked, and on the 18th those of Lure, Bithaine, and Molans.[1335] On the 29th, an accident which occurs with some fire-works at a popular festival at the house of M. de Mesmay, leads the lower class to believe that the invitation extended to them was a trap, and that there was a desire to get rid of them by treachery.[1336] Seized with rage they set fire to the chateau, and during the following week[1337] destroy three abbeys, ruin eleven chateaux and pillage others. "All records are destroyed, the registers and court-rolls are carried off; and the deposits violated."--Starting from this spot, "the hurricane of insurrection" stretches over the