Suddenly such an appalling stench of putrefaction rose from a sewer near by that several people were turned sick; a woman was taken ill and handed over in a fainting condition to a couple of National Guards, who carried her off to a pump a few yards away. All held their noses, and fell to growling and grumbling, exchanging conjectures each more ghastly and alarming than the last. What was it? a dead animal buried thereabouts, a dead fish, perhaps, put in for mischief's sake, or more likely a victim of the September massacres, some noble or priest, left to rot in a cellar. "They buried them in cellars, eh?" "They got rid of 'em anywhere and anyhow." "It will be one of the Chatelet prisoners. On the 2nd I saw three hundred in a heap on the Port au Change." The Parisians dreaded the vengeance of these aristocrats who were like to poison them with their dead bodies. Evariste Gamelin joined the line; he was resolved to spare his old mother the fatigues of the long wait. His neighbour, the _citoyen_ Brotteaux, went with him, calm and smiling, his Lucretius in the baggy pocket of his plum-coloured coat. The good old fellow enjoyed the scene, calling it a bit of low life worthy the brush of a modern Teniers. "These street-porters and goodwives," he declared, "are more amusing than the Greeks and Romans our painters are so fond of nowadays. For my part, I have always admired the Flemish style." One fact he was too sensible and tactful to mention--that he had himself owned a gallery of Dutch masters rivalled only by Monsieur de Choiseul's in the number and excellence of the examples. "Nothing is beautiful save the Antique," returned the painter, "and what is inspired by it. Still, I grant you these low-life scenes by Teniers, Jan Steen or Ostade are better stuff than the frills and furbelows of Watteau, Boucher, or Van Loo; humanity is shown in an ugly light, but it is not degraded as it is by a Baudouin or a Fragonard." A hawker went by bawling: "_Bulletin of the Revolutionary Tribunal!_... list of the condemned!" "One Revolutionary Tribunal is not enough," said Gamelin, "there should be one in every town ... in every town, do I say?--nay, in every village, in every hamlet. Fathers of families, citizens, one and all, should constitute themselves judges. At a time when the enemy's cannon is at her gates and the assassin's dagger at her throat, the Nation must hold mercy to be parricide. What! Lyons, Marseilles, Bordeaux in insurrection, Corsica in revolt, La Vendee on fire, Mayence and Valenciennes in the hands of the Coalition, treason in the country, town and camp, treason sitting on the very benches of the National Convention, treason assisting, map in hand, at the council board of our Commanders in the field!... The fatherland is in danger--and the guillotine must save her!"