tribunal; to-morrow, also, three merchants will dance the carmagnole,
and they are the ones we are after."[92]

Men and things, all must perish; he wishes to demolish the city and
proposes to fill up the harbor. Restrained with great difficulty,
Fréron contents himself with a destruction of "the haunts" of the
aristocracy, two churches, the concert-hall, the houses around it, and
twenty-three buildings in which the rebel sections had held their
meetings.

At Lyons, to increase the booty, the representatives had taken pains
to encourage the manufacturers and merchants with vague promises;
these opened their shops and brought their valuable goods, books and
papers out of their hiding-places. No time is lost in seizing the
plunder; "a list of all property belonging to the rich and to anti-
revolutionaries" is drawn up, which is "confiscated for the benefit of
the patriots of the city;" in addition to this a tax of six millions
is imposed, payable in eight days, by those whom the confiscation may
have still spared;[93] it is proclaimed, according to principle, that
the surplus of each individual belongs by right to the sans-culottes,
and whatever may have been retained beyond the strictly necessary, is
a robbery by the individual to the detriment of the nation.[94] In
conformity with this rule there is a general rounding up, prolonged
for ten months, which places the fortunes of a city of one hundred and
twenty thousand souls in the hands of its scoundrels. Thirty-two
revolutionary committees "whose members are thick as thieves select
thousands of guards devoted to them."[95] In confiscated dwellings
and warehouses, they affix seals without an inventory; they drive out
women and children "so that there shall be no witnesses;" they keep
the keys; they enter and steal when they please, or install themselves