to make a stamp, buttons, and even large pennies, so that whoever has a sou can remove and re-stamp the seals as he pleases;" having been successful, "they screen their thefts by substituting cut pebbles and counterfeit stones for real ones." Finally, at the auction sales, "fearing the honesty or competition of intelligent judges, they offer money (to these) to stay away from the sales; one case is cited where they have knocked a prospective bidder down." In the meantime, at the club, they shout with all their might; this, with the protection of a member of the municipality or of the Revolutionary Committee, shelters them from all suspicion. As for the protector, he gets his share without coming out into the light. Accuse, if you dare, a republican functionary who secretly, or even openly, profits by these larcenies; he will show clean hands.--Such is the incorruptible patriot, the only one of his species, whom the representatives discover at Strasbourg, and whom they appoint mayor at once. On the 10th of Vendémiaire, year III.,[33134] there is found "in his apartments" a superb and complete assortment of ecclesiastical objects, "forty-nine copes and chasubles, silk or satin, covered with gold or silver; fifty-four palles of the same description;" a quantity of "reliquaries, vases and spoons, censers, laces, silver and gold fringe, thirty-two pieces of silk," etc. None of these fine things belong to him; they are the property of citizen Mouet, his father. This prudent parent, taking his word for it, "deposited them for safe keeping in his son's house during the month of June, 1792 (old style);"--could a good son refuse his father such a slight favor? It is very certain that, in '93 and '94, during the young man's municipal dictatorship, the elder did not pay the Strasbourg Jew brokers too much, and that they did business in an off-hand way. By what right could a son and magistrate prevent his father, a free individual, from looking after "his own affairs" and buying according to trade principles, as cheap as he could?