M.
Davilliers begs to be allowed to consult his partners, and, as they are not in prison, they refuse.

Lemoal, on his side, is anxious to receive the money for his note, while poor Davilliers, "struck with terror by nocturnal arrests," and seeing that Lemoal is always on the top of the ladder, concludes to pay; at first, he gives him thirty thousand livres, and next, the charges, amounting in all to forty-one thousand livres, when, being at the end of his resources, he begs and entreats to have his note returned to him.

Lemoal, on this, considering the chicken as entirely stripped, becomes mollified, and tears off in presence of his debtor "the signature in full of the note," and, along with this, his own receipts for partial payments underneath.

But he carefully preserves the note itself, for, thus mutilated, it will show, if necessary, that he had not received anything, and that, through patriotism, he had undoubtedly wished to force a contribution from a merchant, but, finding him insolvent, had humanely canceled the written obligation.[33116]--Such are the precautions taken in this business.
Others, less shrewd, rob more openly, among others the mayor, the seven members of the military commission surnamed "the seven mortal sins," and especially their president, Lacombe, who, by promising releases, extracts from eight or nine captives three hundred and fifty-nine thousand six hundred livres.[33117] "Through such schemes," writes a rigid Jacobin,[33118] "many of those who had been declared outlaws returned to Bordeaux by paying; of the number who thus redeemed their lives, some did not deserve to lose it, but, nevertheless, they were threatened with execution if they did not consent to everything.

But material proofs of this are hard to obtain.