e entire staff of the party; "these are
the clamorers of the sections and of the groups, the only ones who
have clearly declared themselves against order, the apostles of a new
sedition, scathed or ruined men who need disturbance to keep alive,"
while under these comes the train of Marat, vile women, worthless
wretches, and "paid shouters at three francs a day."[3384]

To this must be added that the quality of the factious is still more
reduced than their number. Plenty of honest men, small tradesmen, wine
dealers, cook-shop keepers, clerks, who, on the 10th of August, were
against the Court, are now against the Commune.[3385] The September
affair, probably, disgusted them, and they were not disposed to
recommence the massacres. A workman named Gonchon, for example, the
usual spokesman of the faubourg Saint-Antoine, an upright man, sincere
and disinterested, supports Roland, and, very soon, at Lyons, seeing how
things are with his own eyes, he is to loyally endorse the revolt of
the moderates against the Maratists.[3386] "The respectable class of the
arts, says observers, "is gradually leaving the faction to join the sane
party."[3387] "Now that water-carriers, porters and the like storm the
loudest in the sections, it is plain to all eyes that the gangrene
of disgust has reached the fruit-sellers, tailors, shoe-makers, bar
owners," and others of that class.[3388]--Towards the end, "butchers of
both classes, high and low, are aristocratized."--In the same way, "the
women in the markets, except a few who are paid and whose husbands are
Jacobins, curse and swear, fume, fret and storm." "This morning," says
a merchant, "four or five of them were here; they no longer insist
on being called citoyennes; they declare that they "spit on the
republic."[3389]--The only remaining patriot females are from the lowest
of the low class, the harpies who pillage shops as much through envy
as through necessity, "boat-women, embittered by hard labor,[3390]...
jealous of the grocer's wife, better dressed than herself, as the latter
was of the wives of the attorney and counselor, as these were of those
of the financier and noble. The woman of the people thinks she cannot do
too much to lower the grocer's wife to her own level."

Thus reduced to its dregs through the withdrawal of its tolerably honest
recruits, the faction now comprises none but the scum of the populace,
first, "subordinate workmen who look upon the downfall of their
employ