- And yet their innocence is so clearly manifest
that the Legislative Assembly itself cannot help recognizing it.
After eleven weeks of durance the order is given to set them free,
with the exception of two, a youth of less than eighteen years and
an old man, almost an octogenarian, on whom two letters,
misunderstood, still leave a shadow of suspicion. - But it is not
certain that the people are disposed to give them up. The National
Guard refuses to discharge them in open daylight and serve as their
escort. Even the evening before numerous groups of women, a few men
mingled with them, talk of murdering all those fellows the moment
they set foot outside the chateau." They have to be let out at two
o'clock in the morning, secretly, under a strong guard, and to leave
the town at once as six months before they left the rural districts.
- Neither in country nor in the town[20] are they under the
protection of civil or religious law; a gentleman, who is not
compromised in the affair, remarks that their situation is worse
than that of Protestants and vagabonds during the worst years of the
Ancient R?gime.
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