details of the camp against which Paris has risen; both are publicly
proscribed for eight days previously by the Palais-Royal, and, with
a people frightened by disorder, exasperated by hunger, and
stupefied by suspicion, an accused person is a guilty one. -- With
regard to Foulon, as with Réveillon, a story is made up, coined in
the same mint, a sort of currency for popular circulation, and which
the people itself manufactures by casting into one tragic expression
the sum of its sufferings and rankling memories:[53] "He said that
we were worth no more than his horses; and that if we had no bread
we had only to eat grass." -- The old man of seventy-four is brought
to Paris, with a truss of hay on his head, a collar of thistles
around his neck, and his mouth stuffed with hay. In vain does the
electoral bureau order his imprisonment that he may be saved; the
crowd yells out: "Sentenced and hung!" and, authoritatively,
appoints the judges. In vain does Lafayette insist and entreat
three times that the judgment be regularly rendered, and that the
accused be sent to the Abbaye. A new wave of people comes up, and
one man, "well dressed," cries out: "What is the need of a sentence
for a man who has been condemned for thirty years?" Foulon is
carried off; dragged across the square, and hung to the lamp post.
The cord breaks twice, and twice he falls upon the pavement. Re-
hung with a fresh cord and then cut down, his head is severed from
his body and placed on the end of a pike.[54] Meanwhile, Berthier,
sent away from Compiègne by the municipality, afraid to keep him in
his prison where he was constantly menaced, arrives in a cabriolet
under escort. The people carry placards around him filled with
opprobrious epithets; in changing horses they threw hard black bread
into the carriage, exclaiming, "There, wretch, see the bread you
made us eat!" On reaching the church of Saint-Merry, a fearful storm
of insults burst forth against him. He is called a monopolist,