On the other hand, it kills a former royal procureur, on whom addresses are found tainted with "aristocratic principles," an unpopular lieutenant-colonel, and a suspected captain .-- However slight or ill-founded a suspicion, so much the worse for the officer on whom it falls! At Charleville,[3270] two loads of arms having passed through one gate instead of another, to avoid a bad road, M.Juchereau, inspector of the manufacture of arms and commander of the place, is declared a traitor by the volunteers and the crowd, torn from the hands of the municipal officers, clubbed to the ground, stamped on, and stabbed.

His head, fixed to a pike, is paraded through Charleville, then into Mezieres, where it is thrown into the river running between the two towns.

The body remains, and this the municipality orders to be interred; but it is not worthy of burial; the murderers get hold of it, and cast it into the water that it may join the head.

In the meantime the lives of the municipal officers hang by a single thread.

One is seized by the throat; another is knocked out of his chair and threatened with hanging, a gun is aimed at him and he is beaten and kicked; subsequently a plot is devised "to cut off their heads and plunder their houses." He who disposes of lives, indeed, also disposes of property.