Men died of grief when they learnt the awful facts, and many more went mad.
Women cast themselves in panic from housetops, others from the bridges into the River Seine.
Sisters, wives, and mothers of the Conventionalists, who had condemned lovers to death, shrank from them as from lepers.
One of the principal judges at the trial, Michael Lepelletier, was almost immediately stabbed in an eating-house by one Paris, a hot-headed Royalist, who escaped only for a short time. Tracked, he shot himself; and upon the body was found a paper bearing these words:—
“I alone did the deed—let no other man be suspected. I did not mean to kill the wretch, Lepelletier, but he came in my way. I was waiting for the parricide D’Orleans, of whom I hoped to rid the world. All Frenchmen have become cowards.”
Three days after, Lepelletier was publicly buried, after the antique Greek mode, and thousands were squandered upon this pomp.
Meanwhile the nations were rising against France, although about this time the Prussians had been worsted by the French on the eastern frontiers.
In England, the horror produced was great; and one Chauvelin having returned from London to Paris, declaring to the Convention that the English masses were ready to rise and massacre the King (George III) in his palace, the French ambassador at London was ordered to leave England within twenty-four hours.
The Convention thereupon declared war against Holland and England.