nks to cut down any who approached the shore. This was what Carrier
called his _Republican Baptisms_. The _Republican Marriages_ were, if
possible, a still greater refinement of cruelty. Two persons of
different sexes, bereft of every species of dress, were bound together,
and after being left in torture in that situation for half an hour,
thrown into the river. Such was the quantity of corpses accumulated in
the Loire, that the water of that river was affected, so as to render a
public ordinance necessary, forbidding the use of it to the inhabitants;
and the mariners, when they heaved their anchors, frequently brought up
boats charged with corpses. Birds of prey flocked to the shores and fed
on human flesh; while the very fish became so poisonous, as to induce an
order of the municipality of Nantes, prohibiting them to be taken by the
fishermen.

"The scenes in the prisons which preceded these horrible executions
exceeded all that romance had figured of the terrible. Many women died
of terror the moment a man entered their cells, conceiving that they
were about to be led out to the noyades; the floors were covered with
the bodies of their infants, numbers of whom were yet quivering in the
agonies of death. On one occasion, the inspector entered the prison to
seek for a child, where, the evening before, he had left above three
hundred infants; they were all gone in the morning, having been drowned
the preceding night. Fifteen thousand persons perished either under the
hands of the executioner, or of disease in prison, in one month: the
total victims of the Reign of Terror at that place exceeded thirty
thousand."

After narrating scenes of terror in Paris, Alison says again: "Such
accumulated horrors annihilated all the charities and intercourse of
life. Before daybreak the shops of the provision merchants were besieged
by crowds of women and children, clamoring for the food which the law of
the _maximum_ in general prevented them from obtaining. The farmers
trembled to bring their fruits to the market, the shop-keepers to expose
them to sale. The richest quarters of the town were deserted; no
equipages of crowds of passengers were to be seen on the streets; the
sinister words, _Propriete Nationale_, imprinted in large characters on
the walls, everywhere showed how far the work of confiscation had
proceeded. Passengers hesitated to address their most intimate friends
on meeting; the extent of calamity had rendered men s