One by one the national
agent, or the mayor, reprimands them in the following language:
"You have been base enough to sign a fawning address to Louis XVI.,
the most odious and the vilest of tyrants, an ogre of the human
species guilty of every sort of crime and debauchery. You are hereby
censured by the people. You are moreover warned that on committing
the first act of incivism, or manifesting any anti-revolutionary
conduct, the surveillance of the constituted authorities will be
extended to you in the most energetic manner; the tribunals will show
you less leniency and the guillotine will insure prompt and imposing
justice."
Each, called by name, receives in turn the threatened admonition, and,
descending from the tribune amidst hues and cries, all sign the
proc?s-verbal. But shame and guilt are often absent, and some of
them do not seem to be sufficiently penitent. Consequently, at the
close of the ceremony, the National Agent calls the attention of the
assembly to "the impudence manifested by certain aristocrats, so
degraded that even national justice fails to make them blush;" and the
Revolutionary Committee, "considering the indifference and derisive
conduct of four women and three men, just manifested in this assembly;
considering the necessity of punishing an inveterate aristocracy which
seems to make sport of corrective acts that bear only (sic) on morals,
in a most exemplary manner, decides that the seven delinquents "shall
be put under arrest, and confined in the jail of Sainte-Marie.
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