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Taine, Hippolyte, 1828-1893

"The French Revolution - Volume 3"

Thirty-two former officers -
chevaliers of St. Louis, mousquetaires, nobles, priests, an ex-
procureur-royal, an ex-treasurer of France, a former administrator of
the department, and two ladies, one of them designated as "calling
herself a former marchioness" - are confined, until peace is secured,
in the jail at Montargis. Other former municipal officers and
officers in the National Guard - men of the law, notaries and
advocates, physicians, surgeons, former collectors, police
commissioners, postmasters, merchants and manufacturers, men and
women, married or widows and widowers - are to make public apology and
be summoned to the Temple of Reason to undergo there the humiliation
of a public penance on the 20th of Vent?se at three o'clock in the
afternoon. They all go, for the summons says, "whoever does not
present himself on the day and hour named will be arrested and
confined until peace is declared." On reaching the church, purified by
Jacobin adoration, "in the presence of the constituted authorities of
the popular club and of the citizens convoked in general assembly,"
they mount one by one into a tribune raised three steps above the
floor," in such a way as to be in full sight.


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