0th of August,
against the kingdom of the Feuillants, the majority of the capital and
against the Legislative Assembly."[26126] Workmen, day laborers, and
petty shop-keepers, not counting women, common vagabonds and regular
bandits, form, indeed, one-twentieth of the adult male population of the
city, about 9,000 spread over all sections of Paris, the only ones to
vote and act in the midst of universal stupor and indifference.--We find
in the Rue de Seine, for example, seven of them, Lacaille, keeper of a
roasting-shop; Philippe, "a cattle-breeder, who leads around she-asses
for consumptives," now president of the section, and soon to become one
of the Abbaye butchers; Guerard, "a Rouen river-man who has abandoned
the navigation of the Seine on a large scale and keeps a skiff, in which
he ferries people over the river from the Pont du Louvre to the Quai
Mazarin," and four characters of the same stamp. Their energy, however,
replaces their lack of education and numerical inferiority. One day,
Guerard, on passing M. Hua, the deputy, tells him in the way of a
warning, "You big rascal, you were lucky to have other people with
you. If you had been alone, I would have capsized my boat, and had the
pleasure of drowning a blasted aristocrat!" These are the "matadors
of the quarter".[26127]--Their ignorance does not trouble them; on
the contrary, they take pride in coarseness and vulgarity. One of the
ordinary speechmakers of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, Gouchon, a designer
for calicos, comes to the bar of the Assembly, "in the name of the men
of July 14 and Augusts 10," to glorify the political reign of brutal
incapacity; according to him, it is more enlightened than that of the
cultivated:[26128] "those great geniuses graced with the fine title of
Constitutionalists are forced to do justice to men who never studied the
art of governing elsewhere than in the book of experience.... Consulting
customs and not principles, these clever people have for a long period
been busy with the political balance of things; we have found it without
looking for it in the heart of man: Form a government which will place
the poor above their feeble resources and the rich below their means,
and the balance will be perfect." [26129]

This is more than clear, their declared purpose is a complete leveling,
not alone of political rights, but, again, and especially, of conditions
and fortunes; they promise themselves "absolute equality, real
equality,"