248 BAILLY. 



barity, all showed themselves instantly resolved to fight 

 him in succession, and so wash out in his blood the dis- 

 grace he had thrown on the whole corps. The dragoon 

 fought that same evening and was killed. 



In his History of Prisons, Riouffe says that " Bailly 

 exhausted the ferocity of the populace, of whom he had 

 been the idol, and was basely abandoned by the people, 

 though they had never ceased to esteem him." 



Nearly the same idea is found expressed in The His- 

 tory of the Revolution, and in several other works. 



What is called the populace rarely read and did not 

 write. To attack it and calumniate it therefore was a 

 convenient thing, since no refutation need to be feared. 

 I am far from supposing that the historians whose works 

 I have quoted, ever gave way to such considerations ; but 

 I affirm, with entire certainty, that they have deceived 

 themselves. In the sanguinary drama that has been 

 unrolled before your eyes, the atrocities had a quite 

 different source from the sentiments common to the 

 barbarians that were swarming in the dregs of society 

 and always ready to soil it with every crime ; in plainer 

 words, it is not to the unfortunate people who have nei- 

 ther property, nor capital, living by the work of their 

 hands, to the proletaires, that we are to impute the de- 

 plorable incidents which marked Bailly's last moments. 

 To put forward an opinion so remote from received 

 opinions, is imposing on one's self the duty of proving its 

 truth. 



After his condemnation, our colleague exclaimed, says 

 La Fayette : " I die for the sitting of the Jeu de Paume, 

 and not for the fatal day at the Champ de Mars." I do 

 not here intend to expound these mysterious words in the 

 glimpses they give us by a half-light ; but, whatever 



