multitude of
good patriots" fill the hall beforehand; "early in the morning the
other chambers of the Palais de Justice, the corridors, the courts
and adjacent streets" overflow with "sans-culottes ready to avenge
any outrage that may be perpetrated on their favorite defender."[3499]
Naturally, excessively conceited, he speaks not like an accused, but
"as an apostle and martyr." He is overwhelmed with applause, unanimously
acquitted, crowned with laurel, borne in triumph to the Convention,
where he thunders a song of victory, while the Girondist majority
is obliged to suffer his presence awaiting to be subjected to their
banishments.--Equally as impotent as the moderates of the Legislative
Assembly are the moderates in the street who recover themselves only
again to be felled to the ground. On the 4th and 5th of May, five or six
hundred young fellows, well-dressed and without arms, have assembled
in the Champs-Elysees and at the Luxembourg to protest against the
ordinance of the Commune, which drafts them for the expedition to La
Vendee;[34100] they shout, "Vive la Republique! Vive la Loi! Down with
anarchists! Send Marat, Danton and Robespierre to the Devil!" Naturally,
Santerre's paid guard disperses these young sparks; about a thousand are
arrested, and henceforth the rest will be careful not to make any open
demonstration on the public thoroughfares.--Again, for lack of
something better to do, we see them frequently returning to the section
assemblies, especially early in May; they find themselves in a majority,
and enter on discussions against Jacobin tyranny; at the Bon-Conseil
section, and at those of Marseilles and l'Unite, Lhuillier is hooted at,
Marat threatened, and Chaumette denounced.[34101]--But these are
only flashes in the pan; to be firmly in charge in these permanent
assemblies, the moderates, like the sans-culottes, would have to be in
constant attendance, and use their fists every night. Unfortunately, the
young men of 1793 have not yet arrived at that painful experience, that
implacable hate, that athletic ruggedness which is to sustain them in
1795. "After one evening, in which the seats everywhere were broken
"[34102] on the backs of the contestants, they falter, and never recover
themselves, the professional roughs, at the end of a fortnight, being
victorious all along the line.--The better to put resistance down, the
roughs form a special league amongst themselves, and go around from
section to s