104 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



The scene was not unfitted for the closing act of 

 that melodrama, a Frenchman's political life. The 

 night was stormy, rain fell, and wind howled ; the 

 outside of the theatre, lighted by the usual French 

 range of firepots, which tossed and flared at every 

 "blast, had a wild look, which suited the desperation 

 of their fortunes ; but a still wilder scene was in the 

 multitude on whom that light fell, the refuse of even 

 the Parisian rabble, the cut-throats and cut-purses of 

 the low quarters of the capital felloAvs neck-deep in 

 all the horrors of the Eevolution, and who looked 

 upon the escape of a victim as a fraud upon their rights 

 of massacre ; all to a man terrorists, a name which 

 singly implies every crime of hand and heart, under 

 every pretence that the Eevolution made common to 

 every culprit in France. To this hideous multitude 

 the opening of the cages, and the delivery of the 

 prisoners to their knives, would have been the 

 highest joy of civisme. But the order of the Di- 

 rectory had not reached to this consummation. The 

 escort moved on ; Paris and its populace, its mid- 

 night festivals, and its deliberations of blood, were 

 left behind ; and the cages rolled along the Eue 

 d'Enfer, into which they should originally have 

 turned at once, except for the purpose of making 

 their inmates a wretched spectacle. 



They had now to undergo a second course of tor- 

 ment along the road to Eochefort, the intended place 

 of embarkation, from the intolerable bruising and 



