r, some painful experience, an enforced surrender which he is far
from realizing.[2104] For this reason, save in the violent party, each
acts as his own chief, according to the impulse of the moment, and the
confusion may be imagined. Strangers who witness it, lift their hands in
pity and astonishment. "They discuss nothing in their Assembly,"
writes Gouverneur Morris,[2105] "One large half of the time is spent
in hallowing and bawling.... Each Man permitted to speak delivers the
Result of his Lubrications," amidst this noise, taking his turn as
inscribed, without replying to his predecessor, or being replied to by
his successor, without ever meeting argument by argument; so that while
the firing is interminable, "all their shots are fired in the air."
Before this "frightful clatter" can be reported, the papers of the day
are obliged to make all sorts of excisions, to prune away "nonsense,"
and reduce the "inflated and bombastic style." Chatter and clamor, that
is the whole substance of most of these famous sittings.

"You would hear," says a journalist, "more yells than speeches; the
sittings seemed more likely to end in fights than in decrees... . Twenty
times I said to myself, on leaving, that if anything could arrest and
turn the tide of the Revolution, it would be a picture of these meetings
traced without caution or adaptation... All my efforts were therefore
directed to represent the truth, without rendering it repulsive. Out
of what had been merely a row, I concocted a scene... I gave all the
sentiments, but not always in the same words. I translated their yells
into words, their furious gestures into attitudes, and when I could not
inspire esteem, I endeavored to rouse the emotions."

There is no remedy for this evil; for, besides the absence of
discipline, there is an inward and fundamental cause for the disorder.
These people are too susceptible. They are Frenchmen, and Frenchmen
of the eighteenth century; brought up in the amenities of the utmost
refinement, accustomed to deferential manners, to constant kind
attentions and mutual obligations, so thoroughly imbued with the
instinct of good breeding that their conversation seems almost insipid
to strangers.[2106]--And suddenly they find themselves on the thorny
soil of politics, exposed to insulting debates, flat contradictions,
venomous denunciation, constant detraction and open invective; engaged
in a battle in which every species of weapon peculiar to a pa