manton (in
the vicinity of Autun), "two days before our arrival a bishop and two
vicars, who were escaping in a carriage, were stopped by them. They
rummaged the vehicle and found some hundreds of francs, and, to avoid
returning these, they thought it best to massacre their unfortunate
owners. This sort of occupation seeming more lucrative to these good
people than the other one, they were on the look-out for all wayfarers."
The three volunteers are stopped by a little hump-backed official and
conducted to the municipality, a sort of market, where their passports
are read and their knapsacks are about to be examined. "We were lost,
when d'Aubonnes, who was very tall jumped on the table... and began
with a volley of imprecations and market slang which took his hearers
by surprise. Soon raising his style, he launched out in patriotic terms,
liberty, sovereignty of the people, with such vehemence and in so loud
a voice, as to suddenly effect a great change and bring down thunders of
applause. But the crazy fellow did not stop there. Ordering Leclerc de
la Ronde imperiously to mount on the table, he addressed the assemblage:
"You shall see whether we are not Paris republicans. Now, sir, say your
republican catechism--'What is God? what are the People? and what is
a King?' His friend, with an air of contrition and in a nasal tone of
voice, twisting himself about like a harlequin, replies: 'God is matter,
the People are the poor, and the King is a lion, a tiger, an elephant
who tears to pieces, devours, and crushes the people down.'"--"They
could no longer restrain themselves. The shouts, cries, and enthusiasm
were unbounded. They embraced the actors, hugged them, and bore them
away. Each strove to carry us home with him, and we had to drink all
round."]

[Footnote 2378: The reader will meet the French expression sans-culottes
again and again in Taine's or any other book about the French
revolution. The nobles wore a kind of breeches terminating under the
knee while tight long stockings, fastened to the trousers, exposed their
calves. The male leg was as important an adornment for the nobles as
it was to be for the women in the 20th Century. The poor, on the other
hand, wore crude long trousers, mostly without a crease, often without
socks or shoes, barefoot in the summer and wooden shoed in the winter.
(SR).]

[Footnote 2379: The song of "Veillons au salut de l'empire" belongs to
the end of 1791. The "Marseillaise" was com