of a distrusted shoemaker; it is opened by his apprentice; six of the ruffians enter, and one of them, showing a paper, says to the poor fellow: "I come on the part of the Executive Power, by which you are condemned to a beating." "What for?" "If you have not done anything wrong, you are thinking about it."[3216] And so they beat him in the presence of his family. Many others like him are seized and unmercifully beaten on their own premises.--As to the expenses of the operation, these must be defrayed by the malevolent. These, therefore, are taxed according to their occupations; this or that tanner or dealer in cattle has to pay 36 francs; another, a hatter, 72 francs; otherwise "they will be attended to that very night at nine o'clock." Nobody is exempt, if he is not one of the band. Poor old men who have nothing but a five-franc assignat are compelled to give that; they take from the wife of an unskilled laborer, whose savings consist of seven sous and a half, the whole of this, exclaiming, "that is good for three mugs of wine."[3217] When money is not to be had, they take goods in kind; they make short work of cellars, bee-hives, clothes-presses, and poultry-yards. They eat, drink, and break, giving themselves up to it heartily, not only in the town, but in the neighboring villages. One detachment goes to Brusque, and proceeds so vigorously that the mayor and syndic-attorney scamper off across the fields, and dare not return for a couple of days.[3218] At Versol, the dwelling of the sworn curé, and at Lapeyre, that of the sworn vicar, are both sacked; the money is stolen and the casks are emptied. In the house of the curé of Douyre, "furniture, clothes, cabinets, and window-sashes are destroyed"; they feast on his wine and the contents of his cupboard, throw away what they could not consume, then go in search of the curé and his brother, a former Carthusian, shouting that "their heads must be cut off; and sausage-meat made of the rest of their bodies!" Some of them, a little shrewder than the others, light on a prize; for example, a certain Bourguière, a trooper of the line, seized a vineyard belonging to an old lady, the widow of a physician and former mayor;[3219] he gathered in its crop, "publicly in broad daylight," for his own benefit, and warns the proprietress that he will kill her if she makes a complaint against him, and, as she probably does complain of him, he obliges her, in the name of the Executive Power, to pay him fifty crowns damages.--As to the common Jacobin gangsters, their reward, besides food and drink, is perfect licentiousness. In all houses invaded at eleven o'clock in the evening. Whilst the father flies, or the husband screams under the cudgel, one of the villains stations himself at the entrance with a drawn saber in his hands, and the wife or daughter remains at the mercy of the others; they seize her by the neck and maintain their hold.[3220] In vain does she scream for help. "Nobody in Saint-Afrique