In hunting down the humbler class of delinquents, the police found abundant employment, and they performed their task in the most oppressive manner. Hénault, the lieutenant of police, an irascible and unreasoning man, was an ardent partisan of the Jesuits, and, of course, was a violent enemy of the proscribed sect. His myrmidons spread terror in all directions. They are charged with having, “even in the dead of night, penetrated into the dwellings of individuals, scaled the walls, broken open the doors, and shown no respect to age or sex, when their object was to discover, imprison, consign to the pillory, banish, and ruin, those who favoured the convulsionaries.” It was dangerous to be subject to epileptic or other fits; persons who were attacked by them in the streets having been pitilessly hurried off to jail. The vigilance of the police was also kept on the stretch, and in a majority of cases was eluded, by the prints, posting-bills, pamphlets, and periodical writings of the convulsionaries, as well as by their secret meetings. Of the prints, one represented the tree of religion, in the branches of which were seated Quesnel, Paris, and other apostles of Jansenism, while two Jesuits were striving to root it up. For this, a rhymer and engraver, Cointre by name, was committed to the Bastile. In another, Archbishop Vintimille was seen throwing a stone at the sainted deacon Paris, and the lieutenant of police was holding the archiepiscopal cross, and stimulating the prelate. This print procured for Mercier, the vender of it, a place in the Bastile. In a third of these caricatures was depicted the pope larded with a dozen Jesuits. In placarding the walls, and distributing hand-bills, all sorts of stratagems were employed. The following is one of the most ingenious modes which was adopted by the bill-stickers. A woman, raggedly dressed, with a large pannier strapped on her back, leaned her pannier against the wall, as though she wished to rest herself. In the pannier was a child, who, as soon as she stopped, opened the cover, and fixed a bill on the wall. As soon as his task was performed he closed the aperture, and his bearer proceeded with him to another convenient place. The bills and short pamphlets, which were made public in this and other ways, were innumerable. In the library of the Duke de la Vallière, there was an imperfect collection of them, which formed thirteen quarto volumes. Most of them seem to have been printed in the environs of the capital; they were often brought into the city by females, and in searching for them, the police officers were guilty of the grossest indecency.