t find thirty persons in Paris who would take their
part, or even take the first step to save them."[3367]

Apart from all this, it makes little difference whether the majority has
any preferences; its sympathies, if it has any, will never be other
than platonic. It no longer counts for anything in either camp, it has
withdrawn from the battle-field, it is now simply the stakes of the
conflict, the prey and the booty of the winner. For, unable or unwilling
to comply with the political system imposed on it, it is self-condemned
to utter powerlessness. This system is the direct government of the
people by the people, with all that ensues, permanence of the section
assemblies, club debates in public, uproar in the galleries, motions in
the open air, mobs and manifestations in the streets; nothing is less
attractive and more impracticable to civilized and busy people. In our
modern communities, work, the family, and social intercourse absorb
nearly all our time; hence, such a system suits only the idle and
rough outcasts who feel at home there; the others refuse to enter an
environment expressly set up for singles, orphans, unskilled persons,
living in lodgings, foul-mouthed, lacking the sense of smell, with a
gift of the gab, robust arms, tough hide, solid haunches, expert in
hustling, and with whom blows replace arguments.[3368]--After the
September massacres, and on the opening of the barriers, a number of
proprietors and persons living on their incomes, not alone the suspected
but those who thought they might become so, escaped from Paris, and,
during the following months, the emigration increases along with the
danger. Towards December rumor has it that lists have been made up of
former Feuillants; "we are assured that during the past eight days more
than fourteen thousand persons have left the capital."[3369] According
to the report of the Minister himself;[3370] "many who are independent
in fortune and position abandon a city where the renewal of proscription
is talked of daily."--" Grass grows in the finest streets," writes
a deputy, "while the silence of the grave reigns in the Thebaides
(isolated villas) of the faubourg Saint-Germain."--As to the
conservatives who remain, they confine themselves to private life, from
which it follows that, in the political balance, those present are of no
more account than the absentees. At the municipal elections in October,
November, and December, out of 160,000 registered voters