The unclaimed dogs of the fugitive or slaughtered aristocracy at that
time wandered without masters, by thousands, through the streets and
slaked their thirst with the blood which flowed down from the guillotine
and dyed the ground with the purple of the new system of
popular liberty.

The smell of the fresh blood and the ghastly sustenance which the
guillotine yielded them had restored the animals to their original
savage propensities, and hence those who had been so fortunate as to
escape the murderous axe of the _sans-culottes_ had now to apprehend the
danger of falling a victim to the sharp teeth of these wild
blood-hounds; and as the ferocious brutes knew no difference between
aristocrats and republicans, but fell upon both with equal fury, it
became necessary, at last, to annihilate these new foes of the republic.
So, the Champs Elysées were surrounded with troops, and the dogs were
driven into the Rue Royale and the Place Royale, where they were mowed
down by musketry. On that one day the dead carcasses of more than three
thousand dogs lay about in the streets of Paris, and there they
continued to fester for three days longer, because a dispute had arisen
among the city officials as to whose duty it was to remove them. At
length the Convention undertook that task, and intrusted the work to
representative Gasparin, who was shrewd enough to convert the removal of
the dead animals into a republican ceremony. These were the dogs of the
_ci-devants_ and aristocrats that were to be buried, and it was quite
proper, therefore, that they should receive aristocratic honors.

Gasparin, acting upon this idea, caused all the coaches of the fugitive
and massacred aristocracy to be brought from their stables, and the
carcasses of the dogs were flung into these emblazoned and escutcheoned
vehicles of old France. Six grand coaches that had belonged to the king