"At the same time, a criminal exposed in the public place had the temerity to cry on the scaffold, 'Long live the King! Long live the Queen! Long live Lafayette! Long live the Prussians! To the devil with the Nation!' These utterances provoked the anger of the people, and the wretch would have perished on the instant had not the attorney of the Commune shielded him with his own body, and had him taken back to prison to be turned over to the judges. In the course of his examination he declared that for several days money had been scattered profusely in the prisons, and that, at the first opportunity, the brigands there held in durance were to be armed in the service of the counter-revolutionists! "Moreover, no one is ignorant that it was in the prisons that the false notes put in circulation were forged; and, in fact, during the expedition of the 2nd of September, there were found in the prisons plates, paper, and all the necessary apparatus for issuing the notes. These articles are in existence now, and are deposited in the archives of the courts.... "Soon thousands of citizens were assembled under the banners of liberty, ready to march. But before their departure, a simple and natural reflection occurred to them: "'At the very moment that we march against the enemy,' they said, 'when we go to shed our blood in defense of the country, we do not wish to leave our fathers, our wives, our children, our old folks, exposed to the onslaughts of the reprobates shut up in the prisons. Before setting out against the foreign enemies, we must first wipe out those in our midst.' "Such was the language of these citizens, when two refractory priests whom they were taking to the Abbey Prison, hearing some seditious cries, offered insults to the Revolution. The rage of the people was at white heat.... "The Swiss, the assassins of the people on the 10th of August, imprisoned to the number of some three hundred, were set free and incorporated in the national battalions.... "Such were the circumstances which preceded and provoked the events of September, events unquestionably terrible, and which, in time of peace would demand legal vengeance, but which, in a period of agitation, it is better to draw the veil over, leaving to the historian the task of appreciating this period of the Revolution, which, however, had many more uses than one thinks." To wind up the portrayal of this redoubtable evolution, I take this extract from a speech of Robespierre's: "They have spoken to you often of the events of September 2. That is the subject at which I am impatient to arrive. I shall treat it in an absolutely disinterested manner....