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10 Reign of Terror caused his downfall. He held the post of a fermier général until 20th March 1791, when the Assemblée Nationale suppressed the institution.

Lavoisier was wrongfully accused of mixing with the tobacco "water and other ingredients harmful to the health of the citizens"; and in May 1794—l'an deuxième de la République—he and twenty-seven of his colleagues were arrested; and on 2nd May Dupin (a member of the Government) brought the charges against the twenty-eight officials, and they were condemned to death.

The accused passed the night of 5th May in the dungeons of the Conciergerie, and were to be fed on black bread, but a generous friend, supposed to be Madame Lavoisier, secretly bribed the jailers, and provided the inmates of the prison with better food. This was no easy task, as the sentries were a double row of gendarmes one on foot, the other on horses and the passages were poorly illuminated by torches. This was the precaution taken to prevent the escape of the prisoners. Some were located in dungeons, where horrors of the most revolting kind had been perpetrated. Lavoisier and others were placed in the dungeon previously occupied by Marie Antoinette. The night was horrible. Only a few had obtained folding-beds, without mattresses or bedclothes, and others rested on the bare earth of the dungeons!