injustice to keep them longer in irons." Roland's clerk makes a minute on Danton's letter: "This matter disposed of." At this I imagine the couple looking at each other in silence. Madame Roland may remember that, at the beginning of the Revolution, she herself demanded heads, especially "two illustrious heads," and hoped "that the National Assembly would formally try them, or that some generous Decius"[3290] would devote himself to "striking them down."[3291] Her prayers are granted. The trial is about to begin in the regular way, and the Decius she has invoked is everywhere found throughout France. The south-east corner remains, that Provence, described to him by Barbaroux as the last retreat of philosophy and freedom. Roland follows the Rhône down with his finger, and on both banks he finds, as he passes along, the usual characteristic misdeeds.--On the right bank, in Cantal and in the Gard, "the defenders of the country" fill their pockets at the expense of taxpayers designated by themselves;[3292] this forced subscription is called "a voluntary gift." "Poor laborers at Nismes were taxed 50 francs, others 200, 300, 900, 1,000, under penalty of devastation and of bad treatment."--In the country near Tarascon the volunteers, returning to the old-fashioned ways of bandits, brandish the saber over the mother's head, threaten to smother the aunt in her bed, hold the child over a deep well, and thus extort from the farmer or proprietor even as much as 4,000 or 5,000 francs. Generally the farmer keeps silent, for, in case of complaint, he is sure to have his buildings burnt and his olive trees cut down.[3293]--On the left bank, in the Isère, Lieutenant-colonel Spendeler, seized by the populace of Tullins, was murdered, and then hung by his feet in a tree on the roadside;[3294]--in the Drôme, the volunteers of Gard forced the prison at Montélimart and hacked an innocent person to death with a saber;[3295] in Vaucluse, the pillaging is general and constant. With all public offices in their hands, and they alone admitted into the National Guard, the old brigands of Avignon, with the municipality for their accomplice, sweep the town and raid about the country; in town, 450,000 francs of "voluntary gifts" are handed over to the Glacière murderers by the friends and relatives of the dead;--in the country, ransoms of 1,000 and 10,000 francs are imposed on rich cultivators, to say nothing of the orgies of conquest and the pleasures of despots, money forcibly obtained in honor of innumerable liberty trees, banquets at a cost of five or six hundred francs, paid for by extorted funds, reveling of every sort and unrestrained havoc on the invaded farms;[3296] in short, the abuse drunken force amusing itself with brutality and proud of its violence.