The crowd accorded it upon one condition—that she should drink a glass of blood, then flowing from one of the dying.
This she did, and saved him.
Another father and daughter, the Cazottes, left the prison together—he condemned, she free. But the daughter cried that she would die with him. So they spared both lives. So far, the national madness had not destroyed pity for women.
The King’s first gentleman, one Thierri, being pierced by a pike, cried, “God save the King!” and died, waving his hat as he was transfixed to the woodwork to which he clung.
A deputy of the National Assembly came to one of the prisons, to claim two prisoners; whom obtaining, as he passed from the prison, the murderers, eating as they sat on the bodies of their victims, asked him, “Are you tired of life?”
“No.”
“Then see the heart of an aristocrat!”
The speaker tore the heart from the gaping breast of the dead man upon which he was coolly seated.
Yet these murderers refused all recompense. The first bands were men of comparative education; but, not being bred butchers, they soon sickened at the task, and left it to be continued by men of more iron nerves than theirs.