ised spies of the Committee of General Security.

Five and thirty livres for every head that falls trunkless into the
basket at the foot of the guillotine! Five and thirty pieces of silver,
now as then, the price of innocent blood. Every cry in the night, every
call for help, meant game for the guillotine, and five and thirty livres
in the hands of a Judas.

And de Batz walked on unmoved by what he saw and heard, swinging his
cane and looking satisfied. Now he struck into the Place de la
Victoire, and looked on one of the open-air camps that had recently been
established where men, women, and children were working to provide arms
and accoutrements for the Republican army that was fighting the whole of
Europe.

The people of France were up in arms against tyranny; and on the open
places of their mighty city they were encamped day and night forging
those arms which were destined to make them free, and in the meantime
were bending under a yoke of tyranny more complete, more grinding
and absolute than any that the most despotic kings had ever dared to
inflict.

Here by the light of resin torches, at this late hour of the night,
raw lads were being drilled into soldiers, half-naked under the cutting
blast of the north wind, their knees shaking tinder them, their arms and
legs blue with cold, their stomachs empty, and their teeth chattering
with fear; women were sewing shirts for the great improvised army,
with eyes straining to see the stitches by the flickering light of
the torches, their throats parched with the continual inhaling of
smoke-laden air; even children, with weak, clumsy little fingers, were
picking rags to be woven into cloth again all, all these slaves were
working far into the night, tired, hungry, and cold, but working
unceasingly, as the country had demanded it: "the people of France in
arms against tyranny!" The people of France had to set to work to make
arms, to clothe the soldiers, the defenders of the people's liberty.

And from this crowd of people--men, women, and children--there came
scarcely a sound, save raucous whispers, a moan or a sigh quickly
suppressed. A grim silence reigned in this thickly-peopled camp; only
the crackling of the torches broke that silence now and then, or the
flapping of canvas in the wintry gale. They worked on sullen, desperate,
and starving, with no hope of payment save the miserable rations wrung
from poor tradespeople or miserable farmers, as wretched, as oppress