BUT to return to those "active citizens, whom aristocratic insolence has
stiled _sans-culottes, brigands_."[28]
[Note 28: These are the words of a French newspaper, called,
_Journal universel, ou Revolutions des Royaumes, par J. P. Audarin_. No.
994, for Sunday, 12 August, 4th year of Liberty, under the motto of
Liberty, Patriotism and Truth.]
On Sunday, they dragged a man to the _Hôtel de Ville_, before a
magistrate, to be tried, for having stolen something in the _Tuileries_
as they said. He was accordingly tried, searched, and nothing being
found on him, was acquitted; _n'importe_, said these citizens, we must
have his head for all that, for we caught him in the act of stealing.
They laid him on his back on the ground, and in the presence of the
judge, who had acquitted him, they sawed off his head in about a quarter
of an hour, with an old notched scythe, and then gave it to the boys to
carry about on a pike, leaving the carcase in the justice-hall.[29]
[Note 29: This is inserted on the authority of a lady, a native of
the French West-India isles, who resided in the same hotel with me, and
who, with two gentlemen who attended her, were witnesses to this
transaction, which they told to whoever chose to listen.]
At the corner of almost every chief street is a black marble slab,
inserted in the wall about ten feet high, on which is cut in large
letters, gilt, _Loix et actes de l'autorité publique_ (laws and acts of
the public authority) and underneath are pasted the daily and sometimes
hourly decrees and notices of the National Assembly. One of these
acquainted the citizens, that _Mandat_ (the former commander-general of
the national guards) had yesterday undergone the punishment due to his
crimes; that is to say, the people had cut off his head.
During several days, after _the day I_ procured all the Paris
newspapers, about twenty, but all on the same side, as the people had
put the editors of the aristocratic papers, _hors d'état de parler_
(prevented their speaking) by beheading one or two of them, and
destroying all their presses.
They, about this time, hanged two money changers (people who gave paper
for _louis d'or_, crowns, and guineas) under the idea that the money was
sent to the emigrants.
On the Saturday morning, at seven, I was in the _Tuileries_ gardens;
only thirty-eight dead naked bodies were still lying there; they were
however covered where decency required; the people who stript them on
the preceding evening, having cut a gash in the belly, and left a bit of
the shirt sticking to the carcase by means of the dried blood. I was
told, that the body of a lady had just been carried out of the
_Carousel_ square; she was the only woman killed, and that probably by
accident. Here I had the pleasure of seeing many beautiful ladies (and
ugly ones too as I thought) walking arm in arm with their male friends,
though so early in the morning, and forming little groups, occupied in
contemplating the mangled naked and stiff carcases.
The fair sex has been equally courageous and curious, in former times,
in this as well as in other countries; and of this we shall produce a
few instances, as follows: