"Death to the betrayers of Longwy!"
"Death to all aristocrats!"
"Death to priests!"
At the Abbaye they found the sanguinary remnants of the prisoners who, transferred from the Conciergerie, had been swept from the carts into the maw of the mob at the very gates that opened to shelter them. On the prison itself there had been as yet no attack. The mob, seeking vengeance on the priests, had swept on to the convent of Les Carmes.
At the sight of the strewn corpses and the blood-bespattered pavements the baker's wife halted, crying:
"I've seen enough; I'm going back."
The cobbler hesitated, listening across the houses to the faint cries of the mob in the Rue Vaugirard. The apprentices sprang forward, while the newsboy exclaimed impudently:
"Come on, comrades, we must see what's doing!"
Nicole, who had come solely to assure herself of Dossonville's safety, likewise recoiling before the spectacle of butchery, was yet so impelled by the subtle, morbid fascination which such scenes exercise over the human mind, that without a thought she hastened on. The fishwife and the cobbler joined them; even the woman who had already started to retreat acceded to the common curiosity and returned, protesting: