[Footnote 2646: Moniteur, XIII. 318, 319. The petition is drawn up apparently by people who are beside themselves. "If we did not rely on you, I would not answer for the excesses to which our despair would carry us! We would bring on ourselves all the horrors of civil war, provided we could, on dying, drag along with us some of our cowardly assassins!"----The representatives, it must be noted, talk in the same vein. La Source exclaims: "The members here, like yourselves, call for vengeance!"--Thuriot: "The crime is atrocious!"] [Footnote 2647: Taine is describing a basic trait of human nature, something we see again and again whether our ancestors attacked small, harmless neighboring nations, witches, renegades, Jews, or religious people of another faith.(SR).] [Footnote 2648: Buchez et Roux, XIX 93, session of Sept. 23, 1792. Speech by Panis: "Many worthy citizens would like to have judicial proof; but political proofs satisfy us"--Towards the end of July the Minister of the Interior had invited Pétion to send two municipal officers to examine the Tuileries; but this the council refused to do, so as to keep up the excitement.] [Footnote 2649: Mallet du Pan, "Mémoires," 303. Letter of Malouet, June 29.--Bertrand de Molleville, "Mémoires," II. 301.--Hua, 148.--Weber, II. 208.--Madame Campan, "Mémoires," II. 188. Already, at the end of 1791, the king was told that he was liable to be poisoned by the pastry-cook of the palace, a Jacobin. For three or four months the bread and pastry he ate were secretly purchased in other places. On the 14th of July, 1792, his attendants, on account of the threats against his life, put a breastplate on him under his coat.] [Footnote 2650: member of the 1789 Constituent Assembly. (SR).] [Footnote 2651: Moniteur, VIII. 271, 278. A deputy, excusing his assailants, pretends that d'Ésprémesnil urged the people to enter the Tuileries garden. It is scarcely necessary to state that during the Constituent Assembly d'Espréménil was one of the most conspicuous members of the extreme "Right."--Duc de Gaëte, "Mémoires," I. 18.] [Footnote 2652: Lafayette, "Mémoires," I. 465.] [Footnote 2653: Moniteur, XIII. 327,--Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 176.] [Footnote 2654: Moniteur, XIII. 340.--The style of these petitions is highly instructive. We see in them the state of mind and degree of education of the petitioners: sometimes a half-educated writer attempting to reason in the vein of the Contrat Social; sometimes, a schoolboy spouting the tirades of Raynal; and sometimes, the corner letter-writer putting together the expressions forming his stock in trade.]