Fortune came to the ruffians' assistance.
At a crossing was a stage run up for the voluntary enlistments. The cabs had to stop. A man pushed through the escort and plunged his sword several times inside a carriage, drawing it out dripping with blood. A prisoner had a cane, and trying to parry the steel, he struck one of the guards.
"Why, you brigands," said the struck man, "we are protecting you and you strike us! Lay on, friends!"
Twenty scoundrels, who only waited for the call, sprung out of the throng, armed with knives tied to poles in the way of spears, and stabbed through the carriage windows. The screams arose from inside the conveyances, and the blood trickled out and left a track on the road-way.
Blood calls for blood, and the massacre commenced which was to last four days.
It was regularized by Maillard, who wanted to have every act done in legal style. His registry exists, where his clear, steady handwriting is perfectly calm and legible in the two notes and the signature. "Executed by the judgment of the people," or "Acquitted by the people," and "Maillard."
The latter note appears forty-three times, so that he saved that number.
After the fourth of September he disappeared, swallowed up in the sea of blood.
Meanwhile, he presided over the court. He had set up a table and called for a blank book; he chose a jury, or rather assistant judges, to the number of twelve, who sat six on either side of him.
He called out the prisoner's name from a register; while the turnkeys went for the person, he stated the case, and looked for a decision from his associates as soon as the accused appeared. If condemned, he said: "To Laforce!" which seemed to mean the prison of that name; but the grim pun, understood, was that he was to be handed over to "brute force."