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It was proved that Le Bon, on an occasion when he chose to be a spectator of some executions he had been the cause of, suspended the operation while he read the newspaper aloud, in order, as he said, that the aristocrates might go out of the world with the additional mortification of learning the success of the republican arms in their last moments.
Those who remained behind were considered as guilty of desertion. The authors of the first constitution were accused of being royalists; the old partisans of republicanism were punished as moderates; the land-owners, as aristocrates; the monied men, as corrupters; the bankers and financiers, as blood-suckers; the shop-keepers, as promoters of famine; and the newsmongers, as alarmists.
Besides all these, there are likewise various classes of moral aristocrates such as the humane, who are averse from massacres and oppression those who regret the loss of civil liberty the devout, who tremble at the contempt for religion the vain, who are mortified at the national degradation and authors, who sigh for the freedom of the press.
There are, doubtless, here, as in all other places, party dissensions; but the threatened siege seems at least to have united all for their common defence: they know that a bomb makes no distinction between Feuillans, Jacobins, or Aristocrates, and neither are so anxious to destroy the other, when it is only to be done at such a risk to themselves.
At each influx of these new recruits, a shout of joy burst from the columns, the military bands struck up the air of the Ça Ira, the Marseillaise of assassins, whilst the insurgents sang the chorus, and brandished their arms threateningly at the windows of those suspected of being aristocrates.
Every well-meaning person is grieved for the present, and apprehensive for the future: and I am not without hope, that this open avowal of the designs of the Jacobins, will unite the Constitutionalists and Aristocrates, and that they will join their efforts in defence of the Crown, as the only means of saving both from being overwhelmed by a faction, who are now become too daring to be despised.
Sometimes you see a pair of unfortunate aristocrates talking politics at the end of a passage, or on a landing-place; and here and there a bevy of females, en deshabille, recounting altogether the subject of their arrest.
"We most probably owe our misfortune to some discarded servant or personal enemy, for I believe you are convinced we have not merited it either by our discourse or our actions: if we had, the charge would have been specific; but we have reason to imagine it is nothing more than the indeterminate and general charge of being aristocrates.
I told you, I believe, in a former letter, that the people of Amiens were all aristocrates: they have, nevertheless, two extremely popular qualifications I mean filth and incivility. I am, however, far from imputing either of them to the revolution.
"V. Those who with the words liberty, country, republic, &c. constantly in their mouths, hold intercourse with ci-devant Nobles, Contre-revolutionnaires, Priests, Aristocrates, Feuillans, &c. and take an interest in their concerns.
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