242 BAILLY. 



ments and ideas had not led him into some manifest 

 errors. 



Who has not, for example, read with tears in their 

 eyes, in the Memoires sur les Prisons, what the author 

 relates of the fourteen girls of Verdun ? " Of those girls," 

 he said, " of unparalleled fairness, and who appeared like 

 young virgins dressed for a public fete. They disap- 

 peared," added Riouffe, " all at once, and were mowed 

 down in the spring of life. The court occupied by the 

 women the day after their death, had the appearance of a 

 garden that had been despoiled of its flowers by a storm. 

 I have never seen amongst us a despair equal to that ex- 

 cited by this barbarity." 



Far be from me the intention to weaken the painful 

 feelings which the catastrophe related by Riouffe must 

 naturally inspire ; but every one has remarked that the 

 report of this writer is very circumstantial; the author 

 appears to have seen all with his own eyes. Yet he has 

 been guilty of the gravest inaccuracy. 



Out of the fourteen unfortunate women who were sen- 

 tenced after Verdun was retaken from the Prussians, two 

 girls of seventeen years of age were not condemned to 

 death on account of their youth. 



This first circumstance was well worth recording. Let 

 us go farther. A historian having lately consulted the 

 official journals of that epoch, and the bulletin of the 

 Revolutionary Tribunal, discovered with some surprise 

 that among the twelve young girls who were condemned, 

 there were seven either married or widows, whose ages 

 varied from forty-one to sixty-nine ! 



Contemporary accounts then, even those of Riouffe, 

 may be submitted without irreverence to earnest discus- 

 sion. When a tenth part of the funds annually devoted 



