One of the bands hews down the
gate of the Lazarists, destroys the library and clothes-presses, the
pictures, the windows and laboratory, and rushes to the cellars;
where it staves in the casks and gets drunk: twenty-four hours after
this, about thirty of them are found dead and dying, drowned in
wine, men and women, one of these being at the point of childbirth.
In front of the house[38] the street is full of the wreckage, and of
ruffians who hold in their hands, " some, eatables, others a jug,
forcing the passers-by to drink, and pouring out wine to all comers.
Wine runs down into the gutter, and the scent of it fills the air;"
it is a drinking bout: meanwhile they carry away the grain and flour
which the monks kept on hand according to law, fifty-two loads of it
being taken to the market. Another troop comes to La Force, to
deliver those imprisoned for debt; a third breaks into the Garde
Meuble, carrying away valuable arms and armour. Mobs assemble
before the hotel of Madame de Breteuil and the Palais-Bourbon, which
they intend to ransack, in order to punish their proprietors.
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