"Ah, monsieur! It is well nigh an impossibility that you have undertaken.

The villains know that there are hundreds of men, friends of the prisoners with whom they have crowded the jails, who would tear them down stone by stone, if they had the power; but in addition to the prison warders--not the men that used to be there, but men taken from the lowest class in the town--the prisons are watched by what they call the volunteers, fifteen hundred men belonging to the scum of the city--the men from the slaughterhouses, the skinners', and the tan yards Some of these are ever on guard round the prisons, night and day.
"There have been great changes here.

A year ago, almost everyone thought that the Assembly was going to do wonderful things.

No one knew exactly what.

According to what they said, everyone was to be able to eat meat, seven days a week, to wear good clothes, and to do just as much work as pleased him and no more.