entered the town of Cressensac with a band playing at its head. I
had never seen anything like it, and it seemed to me quite superb,
but I was unable to understand why, in the midst of all these
soldiers, there was a dozen coaches filled with old men, women and
children, all of whom looked extremely sad. This sight infuriated my
father. He drew back from the window and, striding about with his
aide-de-camp, whom he could trust, I heard him burst out, "These
miserable members of the convention have ruined the revolution which
could have done so much good. There you see yet more innocent people
who are being thrown into gaol because they are landowners or are
related to émigrés; it is disgusting!"

Why, you may ask, did my father continue to serve a government
which he despised? It was because he thought that to confront the
enemies of France was honourable, but did not mean that the military
condoned the atrocities which the convention committed in the
interior of the country.

What my father had said, had interested me in the people in the
coaches. I gathered that they had been, that morning, seized from
their châteaux and were being led away to the prisons of Souilhac.
They were old men, women and children, and I was wondering to myself
how these frail people could present any danger to the country, when
I heard several of the children asking for food. One lady begged a
national guard to let her get out to go and buy something to eat. He
refused her, rudely, and when the lady produced an "assignat" and
pleaded with him to go and buy some bread, he replied, "Do you take
me for one of your former lackeys?" This brutality angered me. I had
noticed that Spire had placed in the pockets of the coach, a number
of bread-rolls in the centre of which was a sausage; I took two of