It was all Jean could do to be silent and submissive under this act of injustice and outrage, but imploring glances from Mère Clouet and Yvonne helped him to hold his tongue. The committee of surveillance left the house, accompanied by yelps of protest from Moufflet, struggling in the grip of Prevôt. When they were gone, Jean tramped up and down the room in a fury of rage and disappointment. "That sneak of a Coudert!" he exploded. "Has he any more right to that dog than we have? He'll never give it to the Assembly, that I know! He wants it for himself, or else he just took it for the sake of robbing us! And now I cannot restore Moufflet to his little master, as I had hoped some day to do!" "Hush! hush!" begged Mère Clouet. "We were lucky to have gotten off without being dragged to prison! Had it not been for that dog's trick, which you were clever enough to teach him, I doubt not but we would have all been in La Conciergerie within an hour!" But Jean was not to be passified by such reasoning, and he went to bed in wrath and tears, and Yvonne followed his example. Events, however, shortly came to pass that made him sincerely thankful they were all yet alive and going about with heads still secure on their shoulders. The domiciliary visits of the last of August had so filled to overflowing every prison in the city with victims (sad to say, for the most part absolutely innocent of the crimes imputed to them!) that a still more horrible plan was determined upon by those two arch fiends of the Revolution, Marat and Danton,--one which should at once clear the prisons for more victims, and strike such terror to the hearts of any remaining royalists as to suppress absolutely all further tendencies in this direction. This was nothing more nor less than a general massacre of all the prisoners without trial, justice or mercy. At two o'clock on Sunday, September 2, 1792, this wholesale slaughter commenced, and for five days the prisons of Paris were scenes of unspeakable and indescribable carnage till at last they were empty. Never was there in history so revolting a sacrifice of innocent lives. Twelve thousand victims perished, and with this fearful prelude, the Reign of Terror began! Three days later, Jean went to make his farewell visit to his friend Bonaparte, now no longer a resident of the Rue Cléry, for he had in the meantime brought his sister to the city from St. Cyr, and was staying at the little hotel De Metz in the Rue du Mail. Bonaparte introduced the boy to his sister, a slender, rather pretty girl of fifteen in the tight-fitting black taffeta cap of the St. Cyr school. As she had little to say for herself, Bonaparte suggested that she remain in her room, while he and Jean repaired for a walk to their favourite spot, the Jardin des Plantes. Once there, Jean reported to him the outrages of their domiciliary visit and discussed with him the horrors of the past few days.