1. the hurrying step of squads of men in each street, leading the suspected to prison or before the committee; 2. around each prison the crowds that have come "to see the disasters"; 3. in the court of the Abaye the cry of the auctioneer selling the clothes of the dead; 4. the rumbling of carts on the pavement bearing away 1,300 corpses; 5. the songs of the women mounted aloft on the carts, beating time on the naked bodies.[31129] Is there a man who, after one of these encounters, does not see himself in imagination before the green table of the section committee, after this, in prison with sabers over his head, and then in the cart in the midst of the bloody pile? Courage falters before a vision like this. All the journals approve, palliate, or keep silent; nobody dares offer resistance.[31130] Property as well as lives belong to whoever wants to take them. At the barriers, at the markets, on the boulevard of the Temple, thieves, decked with the tricolor ribbon, stop people as they pass along, seize whatever they carry, and, under the pretext that jewels should be deposited on the altars of Patriotism, take purses, watches, rings, and other articles, so rudely that women who are not quick enough, have the lobes of their ears torn in unhooking their earrings[31131]. Others, installed in the cellars of the Tuileries, sell the nation's wine and oil for their own profit. Others, again, given their liberty eight days before by the people, scent out a bigger job by finding their way into the Garde-meuble and stealing diamonds to the value of thirty millions.[31132]