appear in quick succession: "Qu'est-ce que le Tiers?" by Sieyes;
"Memoire pour le Peuple Francais," by Cerutti; "Considerations sur les
Interets des Tiers-Etat," by Rabtau Saint-Etienne; "Ma Petition," by
Target; "Les Droits des Etats-generaux," by M. d'Entraigues, and, a
little later, "La France libre," par Camille Desmoulins, and others by
hundreds and thousands.[1208] All of which are repeated and amplified
in the electoral assemblies, where new-made citizens come to declaim and
increase their own excitement.[1209] The unanimous, universal and daily
shout rolls along from echo to echo, into barracks and into faubourgs,
into markets, workshops, and garrets. In the month of February, 1789,
Necker avows "that obedience is not to be found anywhere, and that
even the troops are not to be relied on." In the month of May, the
fisherwomen, and next the greengrocers, of the town market halls come to
recommend the interests of the people to the bodies of electors, and to
sing rhymes in honor of the Third-Estate. In the month of June pamphlets
are in all hands; "even lackeys are poring over them at the gates
of hotels." In the month of July, as the King is signing an order, a
patriotic valet becomes alarmed and reads it over his shoulder.--There
is no illusion here; it is not merely the bourgeoisie which ranges
itself against the legal authorities and against the established regime.
It is the entire people as well. The craftsmen, the shopkeepers and
the domestics, workmen of every kind and degree, the mob underneath the
people, the vagabonds, street rovers, and beggars, the whole multitude,
which, bound down by anxiety for its daily bread, had never lifted
its eyes to look at the great social order of which it is the lowest
stratum, and the whole weight of which it bears.

III.--The Reveillon affair.

Suddenly the people stirs, and the superposed scaffolding totters. It
is the movement of a brute nature exasperated by want and maddened
by suspicion.--Have paid hands, which are invisible goaded it on from
beneath? Contemporaries are convinced of this, and it is probably the
case.[1210] But the uproar made around the suffering brute would alone
suffice to make it shy, and explain its arousal.--On the 21st of April
the Electoral Assemblies have begun in Paris; there is one in each
quarter, one for the clergy, one for the nobles, and one for the
Third-Estate. Every day, for almost a month, files of electors are seen
passin