head with a wooden-shoe and pitched down the grand staircase. The
municipal officers strive in vain to protect him; a rope is put
around his neck and they begin to drag him along. A priest, who
begs to be allowed at least to save his soul, is repulsed and
beaten. A woman jumps on the prostrate old man, stamps on his face
and repeatedly thrusts her scissors in his eyes. He is dragged
along with the rope around his neck up to the Pont de la Selle, and
thrown into the neighboring ford, and then drawn out, again dragged
through the streets and in the gutters, with a bunch of hay crammed
in his mouth.[23]

In the meantime, his house as well as that of the lieutenant of
police, that of the notary Guyot, and that of M. de Saint-Georges,
are sacked; the pillaging and destruction lasts four hours; at the
notary's house, six hundred bottles of wine are consumed or carried
off; objects of value are divided, and the rest, even down to the
iron balcony, is demolished or broken; the rioters cry out, on
leaving, that they have still to burn twenty-seven houses, and to
take twenty-seven heads. "No one at Troyes went to bed that fatal
night."- During the succeeding days, for nearly two weeks, society
seems to be dissolved. Placards posted about the streets proscribe
municipal officers, canons, divines, privileged persons, prominent
merchants, and even ladies of charity; the latter are so frightened
that they throw up their office, while a number of persons move off
into the country; others barricade themselves in their dwellings and
only open their doors with saber in hand. Not until the 26th does
the orderly class rally sufficiently to resume the ascendancy and
arrest the miscreants. -- Such is public life in France after the
14th of July: the magistrates in each town feel that they are at the
mercy of a band of savages and sometimes of cannibals. Those of