His colleague, Sergent, appropriates to himself "three gold watches, an agate ring, and other jewels," left with him on deposit.[26142] "Breaking seals, false charges, breaches of trust," embezzlements, are familiar transactions.

In their hands piles of silver plate and 1,100,000 francs in gold are to disappear.[26143] Among the members of the new Commune, Huguenin, the president, a clerk at the barriers, is a brazen embezzler.[26144] Rossignol, a journeyman jeweller, implicated in an assassination, is at this moment subject to judicial prosecution.[26145] Hebert, a journalistic garbage bag, formerly check-taker in a theatre, is turned away from the Varietes for larceny.[26146] Among men of action, Fournier, the American, Lazowski, and Maillard are not only murderers, but likewise robbers,[26147] while, by their side, arises the future general of the Paris National Guard, Henriot, at first a domestic in the family of an attorney who turned him out for theft, then a tax-clerk, again turned adrift for theft, and, finally, a police spy, and still incarcerated in the Bicetre prison for another theft, and, at last, a battalion officer, and one of the September executioners.[26148]--Simultaneously with the bandits and rascals, monstrous maniacs come out of their holes.

De Sades,[26149] who lived the life of "Justine" before he wrote it, and whom the Revolution delivered from the Bastille, is secretary of the section of the Place Vendome.

Marat, the homicidal monomaniac, constitutes himself, after the 23rd of August, official journalist at the Hotel-de-ville, political advisor and consciousness of the new Commune, and the obsessive plan, which he preaches for three years, is merely an instant and direct wholesale butchery.
"Give me," said he to Barbaroux,[26150] "two hundred Neapolitans armed with daggers, and with only a hand-kerchief on their left arms for a buckler, and I will overrun France and build the Revolution." According to him it is necessary to do away with 260,000 men "on humane grounds," for, unless this is done, there is no safety for the rest.
"The National Assembly may still save France; let it decree that all aristocrats shall wear a blue ribbon, and the moment that three of them are seen in company, let them be hung." Another way would be "to lay in wait in dark streets and at corners for the royalists and Feuillants, and cut their throats.

Should ten patriots happen to be killed among a hundred men, what does it matter?
It is only ninety for ten, which prevents mistakes.