HIS OWN TRIAL. 231 



ten hours after, surrounded the altar of their country ; 

 to the crowd who fell by the fusillade of the National 

 Guard. By changing the date of these crimes, and dis- 

 placing also the localities where these crimes were com- 

 mitted, some historians of our revolution, and amongst 

 others the best known of all, have given, without intend- 

 ing it, to the meeting in the afternoon, a character that 

 cannot be honestly concurred in. 



It is requisite we should know at what hour, in what 

 place, and how, these misfortunes happened, before we 

 hazard an opinion on the sanguinary acts of that day, the 

 17th of July. 



A young man had gone that day very early to the altar 

 of his country. This young man wished to copy several 

 inscriptions. All at once he heard a singular noise, and 

 very soon after the worm of a wimble shot up from the 

 planked floor on which he was standing. The youth 

 went and sought the guard, who raised the plank, and 

 found beneath the altar two ill-looking individuals, lying 

 down and furnished with provisions. One of these men 

 was an invalid with a wooden leg. The guard seized 

 them, arid took them to the Gros Caillou, to the section, 

 to the Commissary of Police. On the way, the barrel of 

 water with which these unfortunate men had provided 

 themselves under the altar of their country, was trans- 

 formed, according to the ordinary course of things, into a 

 barrel of gunpowder. The inhabitants of that quarter of 

 the town collected together ; it was on a Sunday. The 

 women especially showed themselves very much irritated 

 when the purpose of the auger-holes was told them, as 

 declared by the invalid. When the two prisoners came 

 out of the hall to be conducted to the Hotel de Ville, the 

 crowd tore them from the guard, massacred them, and 

 paraded their heads on pikes ! 



