the Loire; at a signal given, the crew leaped into another boast, the bolts were withdrawn, and the shrieking victims precipitated into the waters, amid the laughter of the company of Marat, who stood on the banks to cut down any who approached the shore.  This was what Carrier called his Republican Baptisms.  The Republican Marriages were, if possible, a still greater refinement of cruelty.  Two persons of different sexes, bereft of every species of dress, were bound together, and after being left in torture in that situation for half an hour, thrown into the river.  Such was the quantity of corpses accumulated in the Loire, that the water of that river was affected, so as to render a public ordinance necessary, forbidding the use of it to the inhabitants; and the mariners, when they heaved their anchors, frequently brought up boats charged with corpses.  Birds of prey flocked to the shores and fed on human flesh; while the very fish became so poisonous, as to induce an order of the municipality of Nantes, prohibiting them to be taken by the fishermen.

“The scenes in the prisons which preceded these horrible executions exceeded all that romance had figured of the terrible.  Many women died of terror the moment a man entered their cells, conceiving that they were about to be led out to the noyades; the floors were covered with the bodies of their infants, numbers of whom were yet quivering in the agonies of death.  On one occasion, the inspector entered the prison to seek for a child, where, the evening before, he had left above three hundred infants; they were all gone in the morning, having been drowned the preceding night.  Fifteen thousand persons perished either under the hands of the executioner, or of disease in prison, in one month:  the total victims of the Reign of Terror at that place exceeded thirty thousand.”

After narrating scenes of terror in Paris, Alison says again:  “Such accumulated horrors annihilated all the charities and intercourse of life.  Before daybreak the shops of the provision merchants were besieged by crowds of women and children, clamoring for the food which the law of the maximum in general prevented them from obtaining.  The farmers trembled to bring their fruits to the market, the shop-keepers to expose them to sale.  The richest quarters of the town were deserted; no equipages of crowds of passengers were to be seen on the streets; the sinister words, Propriete Nationale, imprinted in large characters on the walls, everywhere showed how far the work of confiscation had proceeded.  Passengers hesitated to address their most intimate friends on meeting; the extent of calamity had rendered men suspicious even of those they loved most.  Every one assumed the coarsest dress, and the most squalid appearance; an elegant exterior would have been the certain forerunner of destruction.  At one hour only were any symptoms of animation seen:  it was when the victims were conveyed to execution; the humane fled with horror from the sight, the infuriated rushed in crowds to satiate their eyes with the sight of human agony.