doors of the hall, which is done by Amar, reporter of the Committee of
General Security;[104] then, after a declamatory and calumnious
speech, which lasts two hours, he reads off names on two lists of
proscriptions: forty-five deputies, more or less prominent among the
Girondins, are to be at once summoned before the revolutionary
tribunal; seventy-three others, who have signed secret protests
against the 31st of May and 2nd of June, are to be put in jail. No
arguing! the majority dares not even express an opinion. Some of the
proscribed attempt to exculpate themselves, but they are not allowed
to be heard; none but the Montagnards have the floor, and they do no
more than add to the lists, each according to personal enmity;
Levasseur has Vigée put down, and Duroi adds the name of Richon. One
their names being called, all the poor creatures who happen to be
inscribed, quietly advance and "huddle together within the bar of the
house, like lambs destined to slaughter," and here they are separated
into two flocks; on the one hand the seventy-three, and on the other,
the ten or twelve who, with the Girondins already kept under lock and
key, are to furnish the sacramental and popular number, the twenty-two
traitors, whose punishment is a requirement of the Jacobin
imagination;[105] on the left, the batch for the prison; on the right,
the batch for the guillotine.

To those who might be tempted to imitate them or defend them this is a
sufficient lesson. - Subject to the boos, hisses and insults from the
hags lining the streets, the seventy-three[106] are conducted to the
prisoners' room in the town hall. This, already full, is where they
pass the night standing on benches, scarcely able to breathe. The
next day they are crammed into the prison for assassins and robbers,
"la Force," on the sixth story, under the roof; in this narrow garret
their beds touch each other, while two of the deputies are obliged to