[Footnote 31171: Archives Nationales, F.7, 4438. Report to the Committee of Public Safety by Herman, Commissioner of the civil and Police administrations and of the Courts, Messidor 3, year II. "The committee charged with a general supervision of the prisons, and obliged to recognize that all the rascals mostly concerned with liberticide plots are.... still in the prisons, forming a band apart, and rendering surveillance very troublesome; they are a constant source of disorder, always getting up attempts to escape, being a daily assemblage of persons devoting themselves wholly to imprecations against liberty and its defenders.... It would be easy to point out in each prison, those who have served, and are to serve, the diverse factions, the diverse conspiracies.... It may be necessary, perhaps, to purge the prisons at once and free the soil of liberty of their filth, the refuse of humanity." The Committee of Public Safety consequently "charges the commission to ascertain in the prisons of Paris... who have been more specially concerned in the diverse factions and conspiracies that the National convention has destroyed." The word "approved" appears at the foot of the resolution in Robespierre's handwriting, then the signature of Robespierre, and lower down, those of Billaud and Barère. A similar resolution providing for the 7th of Messidor, signed by the same parties and five others, is dispatched the same day. (M. de Martel came across and made use of this conclusive document before I did, most of it being quoted in "Les Types Revolutionnaires.")] [Footnote 31172: Buchez et Roux, XXXIII., 434.] CHAPTER II. THE RULERS OF THE COUNTRY. Let us follow the operations of the new government from top to bottom, from those of its ruling bodies and leaders, to its assemblies, committees, delegates, administrators and underlings of every kind and degree. Like living flesh stamped with a red-hot iron, so will the situation put one their brows the two marks, each with its own different depth and discoloration. In vain do they, too, strive to conceal their scars: we detect under the crowns and titles they assume the brand of the slave or the mark of the tyrant. I. The Convention. The Convention.--The "Plain."--The "Mountain."--Degradation of Souls.--Parades which the Convention is obligated to make.