Marie Antoinette and the Downfall of Royalty Part 16

Behold the heir of Louis XIV., the King of France and Navarre, with but a single servant left him! He has but one coat, and at night his sister mends it. Behold the daughter of the German Caesars, with not even one woman to wait upon her, and who waits on herself, incessantly watched, meanwhile, by the {346} inquisitors of the Commune; who cannot speak a word or make a gesture unwitnessed by a squad of informers who pursue her even into the chamber where she goes to change her dress, and who spy on her even when she is sleeping! And yet neither the calmness nor the dignity of the prisoners suffers any loss.

There was but one thing that keenly annoyed Louis XVI. It was when, on August 24, they deprived him, the chief of gentlemen, of his sword, as if taking away his sceptre were not enough. He consoled himself by prayer, meditation, and reading. He spent hours in the room containing the library of the keeper of archives of the Order of Malta, who had previously occupied the little tower. One day when he was looking for books, he pointed out to M. Hue the works of Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. "Those two men have ruined France," said he in an undertone.

On another day he was pained by overhearing the insults heaped on this faithful servant by one of the Munic.i.p.al Guards. "You have had a great deal to suffer to-day," he said to him. "Well! for the love of me, continue to endure everything; make no answer." At another time he slipped into his hand a folded paper. "This is some of my hair," said he; "it is the only present I can give you at this moment." M. Hue exclaims in his pathetic book: "O shade forever cherished! I will preserve this precious gift to my latest day! The inheritance of my son, it will pa.s.s on to my descendants, and all of them will see in this testimonial of Louis XVI.'s {347} goodness, that they had a father who merited the affection of his King by his fidelity."

In the evenings the Queen made the Dauphin recite this prayer: "Almighty G.o.d, who created and redeemed me, I adore Thee. Spare the lives of the King, my father, and those of my family! Defend us against our enemies! Grant Madame de Tourzel the strength she needs to support the evils she endures on our account." And the angel of the Temple, Madame Elisabeth, recited every day this sublime prayer of her own composition: "What will happen to me to-day, O my G.o.d! I do not know. All I know is, that nothing will happen that has not been foreseen by Thee from all eternity. It is enough, my G.o.d, to keep me tranquil. I adore Thy eternal designs, I submit to them with my whole heart; I will all, I accept all; I sacrifice all to Thee; I unite this sacrifice to that of Thy dear Son, my Saviour, asking Thee by His sacred heart and His infinite merits, the patience in our afflictions and the perfect submission which is due to Thee for all that Thou wiliest and permittest." One day when she had finished her prayer, the saintly Princess said to M. Hue: "It is less for the unhappy King than for his misguided people that I pray. May the Lord deign to be moved, and to look mercifully upon France!" Then she added, with her admirable resignation: "Come, let us take courage. G.o.d will never send us more troubles than we are able to bear."

{348}

The prisoners were permitted to walk a few steps in the garden every day to get a breath of fresh air. But even there they were insulted.

As they pa.s.sed by, the guards stationed at the base of the tower took pains to put on their hats and sit down. The sentries scrawled insults on the walls. Colporteurs maliciously cried out bad tidings, which were sometimes false. One day, one of them announced a pretended decree separating the King from his family. The Queen, who was near enough to hear distinctly the voice which told this news, not exact as yet, was struck with a terror from which she did not recover.

And yet there were still souls that gave way to compa.s.sion. From the upper stories of houses near the Temple enclosure there were eyes looking down into the garden when the prisoners took their walk. The common people and the workmen living in these poor abodes were affected. Sometimes, to show her grat.i.tude for the sympathy of those unknown friends, Marie Antoinette would remove her veil, and smile.

When the little Dauphin was playing, there would be hands at the windows, joined as if to applaud. Flowers would sometimes fall, as if by chance, from a garret roof to the Queen's feet, and occasionally it happened that when the captives had gone back to their prison, they would hear in the darkness the echo of some royalist refrain, hummed by a pa.s.ser-by in the silence of the night.

The Temple tower is no longer in existence. Bonaparte visited it when he was Consul. "There are {349} too many souvenirs in that prison," he exclaimed. "I will tear it down." In 1811 he kept his promise. The palace of the grand-prior was destroyed in 1853. No trace remains of that famous enclosure of the Templars whose legend has so sombre a poetry. But it has left an impress on the imagination of peoples which will never be effaced. It seems to rise again gigantic, that tower where the son of Saint Louis realized not alone the type of the antique sage of whom Horace said: _Impavidum ferient ruinae_, but also the purest ideal of the true Christian. Does not the name Temple seem predestinated for a spot which was to be sanctified by so many virtues, and where the martyr King put in practice these verses of the _Imitation of Jesus Christ_, his favorite book: "It needs no great virtue to live peaceably with those who are upright and amiable; one is naturally pleased in such society; we always love those whose sentiments agree with ours. But it is very praiseworthy, and the effect of a special grace and great courage to live in peace with severe and wicked men, who are disorderly, or who contradict us.... He who knows best how to suffer, will enjoy the greatest peace; such a one is the conqueror of himself, master of the world, the friend of Jesus Christ, and the inheritor of heaven."

{350}

x.x.xIV.

THE PRINCESS DE LAMBALLE'S MURDER.

The Princess de Lamballe, after being taken from the Temple in the night of August 18-19, had been examined by Billaud-Varennes at the Hotel-de-Ville, and then sent, at noon, August 19, to the Force. This prison, divided into two distinct parts, the great and the little Force, was situated between the rues Roi-de-Sicile, Culture, and Pavee.

In 1792 it supplemented the Abbey and Chatelet prisons, which were overcrowded. The little Force had a separate entry on the rue Pavee to the Marais, while the door of the large one opened on the rue des Ballets, a few steps from the rue Saint-Antoine. The register of the little Force, which is preserved in the archives of the prefecture of police, records that, at the time of the September ma.s.sacres, this prison in which the Princess de Lamballe was immured, contained one hundred and ten women, most of them not concerned with political affairs, and in great part women of the town. Here, from August 19 to September 3, the Princess suffered inexpressible anguish. She never heard a turnkey open the door of her cell without thinking that her last hour had come.

{351}

The ma.s.sacres began on September 2. On that day the Princess de Lamballe was spared. In the evening she threw herself on her bed, a prey to the most cruel anxiety. Toward six o'clock the next morning, the turnkey entered with a frightened air: "They are coming here," he said to the prisoners. Six men, armed with sabres, guns, and pistols, followed him, approached the beds, asked the names of the women, and went out again. Madame de Tourzel, who shared the Princess de Lamballe's captivity, said to her: "This threatens to be a terrible day, dear Princess; we know not what Heaven intends for us; we must ask G.o.d to forgive our faults. Let us say the _Miserere_ and the _Confiteor_ as acts of contrition, and recommend ourselves to His goodness." The two women said their prayers aloud, and incited each other to resignation and courage.

There was a window which opened on the street, and from which, although it was very high, one could see what was pa.s.sing by mounting on Madame de Lamballe's bed, and thence to the window ledge. The Princess climbed up, and as soon as her head was noticed on the street, a pretence of firing on her was made. She saw a considerable crowd at the prison door.

Very little doubt remained concerning her fate. Neither she nor Madame de Tourzel had eaten since the previous day. But they were too greatly moved to take any breakfast. They dared not speak to each other. They took their work, and sat down to await the result of the fatal day in silence.

{352}

Toward eleven o'clock the door opened. Armed men filled the room and demanded Madame de Lamballe. The Princess put on a gown, bade adieu to Madame de Tourzel, and was led to the great Force, where some munic.i.p.al officers, wearing their insignia, subjected the prisoners to a pretended trial. In front of this tribunal stood executioners with ferocious faces, who brandished b.l.o.o.d.y weapons. The atmosphere was sickening: full of the steam of carnage, and the odors of wine and blood. Madame de Lamballe fainted. When she recovered consciousness she was interrogated: "Who are you?"--"Marie Louise, Princess of Savoy."--"What is your rank?"--"Superintendent of the Queen's household."--"Were you acquainted with the conspiracies of the court on August 10?"--"I do not know that there were any conspiracies on August 10, but I know I had no knowledge of them."--"Swear liberty, equality, hatred to the King, the Queen, and royalty."--"I will swear the first two without difficulty; I cannot swear the last; it is not in my heart." Here an a.s.sistant said in a whisper to Madame de Lamballe: "Swear it! if you do not swear, you are a dead woman." The Princess made no answer; she put her hands up to her eyes, covered her face with them and made a step toward the wicket. The judge exclaimed: "Let some one release Madame!" This phrase was the death signal. Two men took the victim roughly by the arms, and made her walk over corpses. Hardly had she crossed the threshold when she received a {353} blow from a sabre on the back of her head, which made her blood flow in streams.

In the narrow pa.s.sage leading from the rue Saint-Antoine to the Force, and called the Priests' cul-de-sac, she was despatched with pikes on a heap of dead bodies. Then they stripped off her clothes and exposed her body to the insults of a horde of cannibals. When the blood that flowed from her wounds, or that of the neighboring corpses, had soiled the body too much, they washed it with a sponge, so that the crowd might notice its whiteness better. They cut off her head and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. They tore out her heart, and of this head and this heart they made horrible trophies. The pikes which bore them were lifted high in air, and they went to carry around these excellent spoils of the Revolution.

At the very moment when the hideous procession began its march, Madame de Lebel, the wife of a painter, who owed many benefits to Madame de Lamballe, was trying to get near the prison, hoping to hear news of her. Seeing the great commotion in the crowd, she inquired the cause.

When some one replied: "It is Lamballe's head that they are going to carry through Paris," she was seized with horror, and, turning back, took refuge in a hairdresser's shop on the Place Bastille. Hardly had she done so when the crowd entered the Place. The murderers came into the shop and required the hairdresser to arrange the head of the Princess. They washed it, and powdered the fair hair, all soiled with {354} blood. Then one of the a.s.sa.s.sins cried joyfully: "Now, at any rate, Antoinette can recognize her!" The procession resumed its march.

From time to time they called a halt before a wine-shop. Wis.h.i.+ng to empty his gla.s.s, the scoundrel who had the Princess's head in his hand, set it flat down on the lead counter. Then it was put back on the end of a pike. The heart was on another pike, and other individuals dragged along the headless corpse. In this manner they arrived in front of the Temple. It was three o'clock in the afternoon.

On that day the royal family had been refused permission to go into the garden. They were in the little tower when the cries of the mult.i.tude became audible. The workmen who were then employed in tearing down the walls and buildings contiguous to the Temple dungeon, mingled with the crowd, increased also by innumerable curious spectators, and uttered furious shouts. One of the Munic.i.p.al Guards at the Temple closed doors and windows, and pulled down curtains so that the captives could see nothing.

On the street in front of the enclosure a tricolored ribbon had been fastened across, with this inscription: "Citizens, you who know how to ally the love of order with a just vengeance, respect this barrier; it is necessary to our surveillance and our responsibility." This was the sole dike they meant to oppose to the torrent. At the side of this ribbon stood a munic.i.p.al officer named Danjou, formerly a priest, who was called Abbe Six-feet, on account of his {355} height. He mounted on a chair and harangued the crowd. He felt his face touched by Madame de Lamballe's head, still on the end of a pike which the bearer shook about and gesticulated with, and also by a rag of her chemise, soaked with blood and mire, which another individual also carried on a pike.

The naked body was there likewise, with its back to the ground and the front cut open to the very breast. Danjou tried to make the crowd of a.s.sa.s.sins who wanted to invade the Temple understand that at a moment when the enemy was master of the frontiers, it would be impolitic to deprive themselves of hostages so precious as Louis XVI. and his family. "Moreover," he added, "would it not demonstrate their innocence if you dare not try them? How much worthier it is of a great people to execute a king guilty of treason on the scaffold!" Thus, while preventing an immediate ma.s.sacre, he held the scaffold in reserve. Danjou said that the Communal Council, in order to show its confidence in the citizens composing the mob, had decided that six of them should be admitted to make the rounds of the Temple garden, with the commissioners at their head. The ribbon was then raised and several persons entered the enclosure. They were those who carried the remains of Madame de Lamballe. With these were the laborers who had been at work on the demolitions. Voices were heard demanding furiously that Marie Antoinette should show herself at a window, so that some one might climb up and make her {356} kiss her friend's head. As Danjou opposed this infernal scheme, he was accused of being on the side of the tyrant. Was the dungeon of the Temple to be forced? Were the a.s.sa.s.sins about to seize the Queen, tear her in pieces, and drag her, like her friend, through streets and squares to the rolling of drums and the chanting of the _Ma.r.s.eillaise_ and the _ca ira_?

A munic.i.p.al officer entered the tower and began a mysterious parley with his colleagues. As Louis XVI. asked what was going on, some one replied: "Well, sir, since you desire to know, they want to show you Madame de Lamballe's head." Meanwhile the cries outside were growing louder. Another munic.i.p.al came in, followed by four delegates from the mob. One of them, who carried a heavy sabre in his hand, insisted that the prisoners should present themselves at the window, but this was opposed by the munic.i.p.al officers, who were less cruel. This man said to the Queen in an insulting tone: "They want us to hide the Princess de Lamballe's head from you when we brought it to let you see how the people avenge themselves on their tyrants. I advise you to show yourself if you don't want the people to come up." Marie Antoinette fainted on learning her friend's death in this manner. Her children burst into tears and tried by their caresses to bring her back to consciousness. The man did not go away. "Sir," the King said to him, "we are prepared for the worst, but you might have dispensed yourself from informing the Queen of this frightful calamity." {357} Clery, the King's valet, was looking through a corner of the window blinds, and saw Madame de Lamballe's head. The person carrying it had climbed up on a heap of rubbish from the buildings in process of demolition.

Another, who stood beside him, held her bleeding heart. Clery heard Danjou expostulating the crowd in words like these: "Antoinette's head does not belong to you; the departments have their rights in it also.

France has confided these great criminals to the care of Paris; and it is your business to a.s.sist us in guarding them until national justice shall avenge the people." Then, addressing himself to these cannibals as if they were heroes whose courage and exploits he praised, he added, in speaking of the profaned corpse of the Princess de Lamballe: "The remains you have there are the property of all. Do they not belong to all Paris? Have you the right to deprive others of the pleasure of sharing your triumph? Night will soon be here. Make haste, then, to quit this precinct, which is too narrow for your glory. You ought to place this trophy in the Palais Royal or the Tuileries garden, where the sovereignty of the people has been so often trampled under foot, as an eternal monument of the victory you have just won." Remarks like these were all that could prevent these tigers from entering the Temple and destroying the prisoners. Shouts of "To the Palais Royal!" proved to Danjou that his harangue had been appreciated. The a.s.sa.s.sins at last departed, after having covered his face with {358} kisses that smelt of wine and blood. They wanted to show their victim's head at the Hotel Toulouse, the mansion of the venerable Duke de Penthievre, her father-in-law, but were deterred by the a.s.surance that she did not ordinarily live there, but at the Tuileries. Then they turned toward the Palais Royal. The Duke of Orleans was at a window with his mistress, Madame de Buffon. He left it, but he may have seen the head of his sister-in-law.

Some of the cannibals had remained in the neighborhood of the Temple.

Sitting down at table in a wine-shop, they had the heart of the Princess de Lamballe cooked, and ate it with avidity. "Thus," says M.

de Beauchesne in his excellent work on Louis XVII., "this civilization which had departed from G.o.d, surpa.s.sed at a single bound the fury of savages, and the eighteenth century, so proud of its learning and humanity, ended by anthropophagy." In the evening, when some one was giving Collot d'Herbois an account of the day's performances, he expressed but one regret,--that they had not succeeded in showing Marie Antoinette the remains of the Princess de Lamballe. "What!" he spitefully exclaimed, "did they spare the Queen that impression? They ought to have served up her best friend's head in a covered dish at her table."

{359}

x.x.xV.

THE SEPTEMBER Ma.s.sACRES.

Lovers of paradoxes have tried to represent the September ma.s.sacres as something spontaneous, a pa.s.sing delirium of opinion, a sort of great national convulsion. This myth was a lie against history and humanity.

It exists no longer, Heaven be thanked. The mists with which it was sought to shroud these execrable crimes are now dissipated. Light has been shed upon that series of infernal spectacles which would have made cannibals blush. No; these odious ma.s.sacres were not the result of a popular movement, an unforeseen fanaticism, a paroxysm of rage or vengeance. They present an ensemble of murders committed in cool blood, a planned and premeditated thing. M. Mortimer-Ternaux, in his _Histoire de la Terreur_, M. Granier de Ca.s.sagnac, in his _Histoire des Girondins et des Ma.s.sacres de Septembre_, have proved this abundantly.

They have exhumed from the archives and the record offices such a ma.s.s of uncontested and incontestable doc.u.ments, that not the slightest doubt is now permissible. Edgar Quinet has not hesitated to recognize this in his book, _La Revolution_. He says: "The {360} ma.s.sacres were executed administratively; the same discipline was everywhere displayed throughout the carnage.... This was not a piece of blind, spontaneous barbarism; it was a barbarity slowly meditated, minutely elaborated by a sanguinary mind. Hence it bears no resemblance to anything previously known in history. Marat harvested in September what he had been sowing for three years." The Parisian populace, eight hundred thousand souls, was inert; it was cowardly, it trembled; but it did not approve, it was not an accomplice. It was a monstrous thing that a handful of cut-throats should be enough to transform Paris into a slaughter-house. One shudders in thinking what a few criminals can accomplish in the midst of an immense population. "The people, the real people--that composed of laborious and honest workmen, ardent and patriotic at heart, and of young _bourgeois_ with generous aspirations and indomitable courage--never united for an instant with the scoundrels recruited by Maillard from every kennel in the capital.

While the hired a.s.sa.s.sins of the Committee of Surveillance established in the prisons what Vergniaud called a butcher's shop for human flesh, the true populace was a.s.sembled on the Champ-de-Mars, and before the enlistment booths; it was offering its purest blood for the country; it would have blushed to shed that of helpless unfortunates."[1] In 1871, the murder of hostages and {361} the burning of monuments was no more approved by the population than the ma.s.sacres in the prisons were in 1792. The crimes were committed at both epochs by a mere handful of individuals. The great majority of the people were guilty merely of apathy and fear.

The hideous tableau surpa.s.ses the most lugubrious conceptions of Dante's sombre imagination. Paris is a h.e.l.l. From August 29, it is like a torpid Oriental town. The whole city is in custody, like a criminal whose limbs are held while he is being searched and put in irons. Every house is inspected by the agents of the Commune. A knock at the door makes the inmates tremble. The denunciation of an enemy, a servant, a neighbor, is a death sentence. People scarcely dare to breathe. Neither running water nor solid earth is free. The parapets of quays, the arches of bridges, the bathing and was.h.i.+ng boats are bristling with sentries. Everything is surrounded. There is no refuge. Three thousand suspected persons are taken out of houses, and crowded into prisons. The hunt begins anew the following day. The programme of ma.s.sacres is arranged. The Communal Council of Surveillance has minutely regulated everything. The price of the actual work is settled. The personnel of cut-throats is at its post.

Danton has furnished the executioners; Manuel, the victims. All is ready. The b.l.o.o.d.y drama can begin.

On September 2, Danton said to the a.s.sembly: "The tocsin about to sound is not an alarm signal; it {362} is a charge upon the enemies of the country. To vanquish them, gentlemen, all that is needed is boldness, and again boldness, and always boldness." Two days before, he had been still more explicit. "The 10th of August," said he, "divided us into republicans and royalists; the first few in number, the second many...; we must make the royalists afraid." A frightful gesture, a horizontal gesture, sufficed to express his meaning.

Robbery preceded murder. It was a veritable raid. The Commune caused the palaces, national property, the Garde-Meuble, the houses and mansions of the _emigres_ to be pillaged. One saw nothing but carts and wagons transporting stolen goods to the Hotel-de-Ville. All the plate was stolen from the churches likewise. "Millions," says Madame Roland in her Memoirs, "pa.s.sed into the hands of people who used it to perpetuate the anarchy which was the source of their domination." When will the men of the Commune render their accounts? Never. Who are the accomplices of Danton and Marat in organizing the ma.s.sacres? A band of defaulting accountants, faithless violators of public trusts, breakers of locks, swindlers, spies, and men overwhelmed with debts. What interest have they in planning the murders? That of perpetuating the dictators.h.i.+p they had a.s.sumed on the eve of August 10, and, above all, of having no accounts to render. A few weeks later on, Collot d'Herbois will say at the Jacobin Club: "The 2d of September is the chief article in the creed of our liberty."

{363}

The jailors were forewarned. They served the prisoners' dinner earlier, and took away their knives. There was a disturbed and uneasy look in their faces which made the victims suspect their end was near.

Toward noon the general alarm was beaten in every street. The citizens were ordered to return at once to their dwellings. An order was issued to illuminate every house when night fell. The shops were closed.

Terror overspread the entire city.

It was agreed that at the third discharge of cannon the cut-throats should set to work. The first blood shed was that of prisoners taken from the mayoralty to the Abbey prison. The carriages containing them pa.s.sed along the Quai des Orfevres, the Pont-Neuf and rue Dauphine, until it reached the Bussy square. Here there was a crowd a.s.sembled around a platform where enlistments were going on. The throng impeded the progress of the carriages. Thereupon one of the escort opened the door of one of them, and standing on the step, plunged his sabre into the breast of an aged priest. The mult.i.tude shuddered and fled in affright. "That makes you afraid," said the a.s.sa.s.sin; "you will see plenty more like it."

The rest of the escort followed the example set them. The carriages go on again, and so do the ma.s.sacres. They kill along the route, and they kill on arriving at the Abbey. Towards five o'clock, Billaud-Varennes presents himself there, wearing his munic.i.p.al scarf. "People," says he--what he calls {364} people is a band of salaried a.s.sa.s.sins--"people, thou immolatest thine enemies, thou art doing thy duty." Then he walks into the midst of the dead bodies, dipping his feet in blood, and fraternizes with the murderers. "There is nothing more to do here," exclaims Maillard; "let us go to the Carmelites."

At the Carmelites, one hundred and eighty priests, crowded into the church and convent, were awaiting their fate with pious resignation.

Two days before, Manuel had said to them ironically: "In forty-eight hours you will all be free. Get ready to go into a foreign country and enjoy the repose you cannot find here." And on the previous day a gendarme had said to the Archbishop of Arles, blowing the smoke from his pipe into his face as he did so: "It is to-morrow, then, that they are going to kill Your Grandeur." A short time before the ma.s.sacre began, the victims were sent into the garden. At the bottom of it was an orangery which has since become a chapel. Mgr. Dulau, Archbishop of Arles, and the Bishops of Beauvais and de Saintes, both of whom were named de la Rochefoucauld, kneeled down with the other priests and recited the last prayers. The murderers approached. The Archbishop of Arles, who was upwards of eighty, advanced to meet them. "I am he whom you seek," he said; "my sacrifice is made; but spare these worthy priests; they will pray for you on earth, and I in heaven." They insulted him before they struck him. "I have never done harm to any one," said he. An a.s.sa.s.sin {365} responded: "Very well; I'll do some to you," and killed him. The other priests were chased around the garden from one tree to another, and shot down. During this infernal hunt the murderers were shouting with laughter and singing their favorite song: _Dansez la Carmagnole_!

The ma.s.sacre of the Carmelites is over. "Let us go back to the Abbey!"

cries Maillard; "we shall find more game there." This time there is a pretence of justice made. The tribunal is the vestibule of the Abbey; Maillard, the chief cut-throat, is president; the a.s.sa.s.sins are the judges, and the public, the Ma.r.s.eillais, the sans-culottes, the female furies, and men to whom murder was a delightful spectacle. The prisoners are summoned one after another. They enter the vestibule, which has a wicket as a door of exit. They are questioned simply as a matter of form. Their answers are not even listened to. "Conduct this gentleman to the Force!" says the president. The prisoner thinks he is safe; he does not know that this phrase has been agreed upon as the signal of death. On reaching the wicket, hatchet and sabre strokes cut him down in the midst of his dream. The Swiss officers and soldiers who had survived August 10 were murdered thus. Their torture lasted a longer or shorter time, and was accomplished with more or less cruel refinements, according to the caprice of the a.s.sa.s.sins, who were nearly all drunk.

Night came, and torches were lighted. No {366} shadows; a grand illumination. They must see clearly in the slaughter house. Lanterns were placed near the lakes of blood and heaps of dead bodies, so as plainly to distinguish the work from the workmen. There were some who were bent on losing no details of the carnage. The spectators wanted to take things easy. They were tired of standing too long. Benches for men and others for dames were got ready for them. The death-rattle of the agonizing, the vociferations of the a.s.sa.s.sins, the emulation between the executioners who kill slowly and the victims who are in haste to die, give joy to the spectators. There is no interruption to the human butchery. There has been so much blood spilled that the feet of the murderers slip on the pavement. A litter is made of straw and the clothes of the victims, and thereafter none are killed except upon this mattress. In this way the work is more commodiously accomplished.

The a.s.sa.s.sins have plenty of a.s.surance. Morning dawns on the continuation of the murders, and the wives of the murderers bring them something to eat.