This huge cake
belongs to them; they do not allow that strangers, Parisians, should
have a slice,[130] and they intend to eat the whole of it, at
discretion, without control, even to the last crumb. As to their mode
of operations, it consists in "selling justice, in trading on
denunciations, in holding under sequestration at least four thousand
households," in putting seals everywhere on dwellings and warehouses,
in not summoning interested parties who might watch their proceedings,
in expelling women, children and servants who might testify to their
robberies, in not drawing up inventories, in installing themselves as
"guardians at five francs a day," themselves or their boon companions,
and in "general squandering, in league with the administrators." It is
impossible to stay their hands or repress them, even for the
representatives. Take them in the act,[131] and you must shut your
eyes or they will all shout at the oppression of patriots; they do
this systematically so that nobody may be followed up.
We passed an order forbidding any authority to remove seals without
our consent, and, in spite of the prohibition, they broke into a
storehouse under sequestration, .
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