; their degree of probity is about the same as we find
nowadays among people of the same condition in life.

At the outset, especially, no one considers filling his pockets. At the
Abbaye prison, they come honorably and place on the table in the room
of the civil committee the purses and jewels of the dead.[3189] If they
appropriate anything to themselves, it is shoes to cover their naked
feet, and then only after asking permission. As to pay, all rough work
deserves it, and, moreover, between them and their recruiters, the
answer is obvious. With nothing but their own hands to rely on, they
cannot work for nothing,[3190] and, as the work is hard, they ought to
be paid double time. They require six francs a day, besides their meals
and as much wine as they want. One caterer alone furnished the men at
the Abbaye with 346 pints:[3191] when working incessantly day and night
with a task like that of sewer-cleaners and miners, nothing else will
keep their courage up.--Food and wages must be paid for by the nation;
the work is done for the nation, and, naturally, on interposing
formalities, they get out of temper and betake themselves to Roland,
to the City treasurer, to the section committees, to the Committee of
Supervision,[3192] murmuring, threatening, and showing their bloody
pikes. That is the evidence of having done their work well. They
boast of it to Petion, impress upon him how "just and attentive" they
were,[3193] their discernment, the time given to the work, so many days
and so many hours; they ask only for what is "due to them"; when the
treasurer, on paying them, demands their names, they give them without
the slightest hesitation. Those who escort a dismissed prisoner; masons,
hairdressers, federates, require no recompense but "something to drink";
"we do not carry on this business for money," they say; "here is your
friend; he promised us a glass of brandy, which we will take and then
go back to our work."[3194]--Outside of their business they possess the
expansive cordiality and ready sensitivity of the Parisian workman. At
the Abbaye, a federate,[3195] on learning that the prisoners had been
kept without water for twenty-six hours, wanted to "exterminate" the
turnkey for his negligence, and would have done it if "the prisoners
themselves had not pleaded for him." On the acquittal of a prisoner, the
guards and the butchers, everybody, embraces him with enthusiasm; Weber
is greeted again and again for more tha