lier."[2214] Henceforth this will
no longer be a chain but "the acquittance of an agreeable debt which
every citizen owes to his country... Divorce is the protecting spirit of
marriage."[2215]

On a background of classic pedantry, with only vague and narrow notions
of ordinary instruction, lacking exact and substantial information, flow
obscenities and enlarged commonplaces enveloped in a mythological gauze,
spouting in long tirades as maxims from the revolutionary manual. Such
is the superficial culture and verbal argumentation from which vulgar
and dangerous ingredients the intelligence of the new legislators is
formed.[2216]

III.--Aspects of their sessions.

Scenes and display at the club.--Co-operation of spectators.

From this we can imagine what their sessions were. "More in-coherent and
especially more passionate than those of the Constituent Assembly"[2217]
they present the same but intensified characteristics. The argument is
weaker, the invective more violent, and the dogmatism more intemperate.
Inflexibility degenerates into insolence, prejudice into fanaticism, and
near-sightedness into blindness. Disorder becomes a tumult and constant
din an uproar. Suppose, says an eye-witness,

"a classroom with hundreds of pupils quarreling and every instant on the
point of seizing each other by the hair. Their dress neglected, their
attitudes angry, with sudden transitions from shouting to hooting.. is a
sight hard to imagine and to which nothing can be compared."

It lacks nothing for making it a club of the lowest species. Here,
in advance, we contemplate the ways of the future revolutionary
inquisition. They welcome burlesque denunciations; enter into petty
police investigations; weigh the tittle-tattle of porters and the
gossip of servant-girls; devote an all-night session to the secrets of
a drunkard.[2218] They enter on their official report and without any
disapproval, the petition of M. Hure, "living at Pont-sur-Yonne, who,
over his own signature, offers one hundred francs and his arm to become
a killer of tyrants." Repeated and multiplied hurrahs and applause with
the felicitations of the president is the sanction of scandalous or
ridiculous private misconduct seeking to display itself under the
cover of public authority. Anacharsis Clootz, "a Mascarille officially
stamped," who proposes a general war and who hawks about maps of Europe
cut up in advance into departments beginning with Savoy, B