judge you!--What shall
hot Fournier do? It was his duty, as volunteer Constable, had he been a
perfect character, to guard those men's lives never so Aristocratic, at
the expense of his own valuable life never so Sansculottic, till
some Constituted Court had disposed of them. But he was an imperfect
character and Constable; perhaps one of the more imperfect.

Hot Fournier, ordered to turn thither by one Authority, to turn thither
by another Authority, is in a perplexing multiplicity of orders; but
finally he strikes off for Versailles. His Prisoners fare in tumbrils,
or open carts, himself and Guards riding and marching around: and at the
last village, the worthy Mayor of Versailles comes to meet him, anxious
that the arrival and locking up were well over. It is Sunday, the
ninth day of the month. Lo, on entering the Avenue of Versailles,
what multitudes, stirring, swarming in the September sun, under the
dull-green September foliage; the Four-rowed Avenue all humming and
swarming, as if the Town had emptied itself! Our tumbrils roll heavily
through the living sea; the Guards and Fournier making way with ever
more difficulty; the Mayor speaking and gesturing his persuasivest;
amid the inarticulate growling hum, which growls ever the deeper even by
hearing itself growl, not without sharp yelpings here and there:--Would
to God we were out of this strait place, and wind and separation had
cooled the heat, which seems about igniting here!

And yet if the wide Avenue is too strait, what will the Street de
Surintendance be, at leaving of the same? At the corner of Surintendance
Street, the compressed yelpings became a continuous yell: savage figures
spring on the tumbril-shafts; first spray of an endless coming tide! The
Mayor pleads, pushes, half-desperate; is pushed, carried off in men's
arms: the savage tide has entrance, has mastery. Amid horrid noise, and
tumult as of fierce wolves, the Prisoners sink massacred,--all but some
eleven, who escaped into houses, and found mercy. The Prisons, and
what other Prisoners they held, were with difficulty saved. The stript
clothes are burnt in bonfire; the corpses lie heaped in the ditch on
the morrow morning. (Pieces officielles relatives au massacre des
Prisonniers a Versailles in Hist. Parl. xviii. 236-249.) All France,
except it be the Ten Men of the Circular and their people, moans and
rages, inarticulately shrieking; all Europe rings.

But neither did Danton shriek; though,