Houses of Aristocrats, we say, are doomed. Paralytic Couthon, borne in
a chair, taps on the wall, with emblematic mallet, saying, "La Loi te
frappe, The Law strikes thee;" masons, with wedge and crowbar, begin
demolition. Crash of downfall, dim ruin and dust-clouds fly in the
winter wind. Had Lyons been of soft stuff, it had all vanished in those
weeks, and the Jacobin prophecy had been fulfilled. But Towns are not
built of soap-froth; Lyons Town is built of stone. Lyons, though it
rebelled against the Republic, is to this day.

Neither have the Lyons Girondins all one neck, that you could despatch
it at one swoop. Revolutionary Tribunal here, and Military Commission,
guillotining, fusillading, do what they can: the kennels of the Place
des Terreaux run red; mangled corpses roll down the Rhone. Collot
d'Herbois, they say, was once hissed on the Lyons stage: but with what
sibilation, of world-catcall or hoarse Tartarean Trumpet, will ye hiss
him now, in this his new character of Convention Representative,--not to
be repeated! Two hundred and nine men are marched forth over the River,
to be shot in mass, by musket and cannon, in the Promenade of the
Brotteaux. It is the second of such scenes; the first was of some
Seventy. The corpses of the first were flung into the Rhone, but the
Rhone stranded some; so these now, of the second lot, are to be buried
on land. Their one long grave is dug; they stand ranked, by the loose
mould-ridge; the younger of them singing the Marseillaise. Jacobin
National Guards give fire; but have again to give fire, and again; and
to take the bayonet and the spade, for though the doomed all fall, they
do not all die;--and it becomes a butchery too horrible for speech. So
that the very Nationals, as they fire, turn away their faces. Collot,
snatching the musket from one such National, and levelling it with
unmoved countenance, says "It is thus a Republican ought to fire."

This is the second Fusillade, and happily the last: it is found too
hideous; even inconvenient. They were Two hundred and nine marched out;
one escaped at the end of the Bridge: yet behold, when you count the
corpses, they are Two hundred and ten. Rede us this riddle, O Collot?
After long guessing, it is called to mind that two individuals, here
in the Brotteaux ground, did attempt to leave the rank, protesting
with agony that they were not condemned men, that they were Police
Commissaries: which two we repulsed, and disbelieve