ses
of patriotic Jacobins? Do not Mayor Pache's wife and daughter go to the
clubs and kiss drunken sans-culottes? And what says the guard?--It has
enough to do to restrain another blind and deaf animal instinct, aroused
as it is by suffering, anticipation and deception.

On approaching each butcher's stall before it opens "the porters,
bending under the weight of a side of beef, quicken their steps so as
not to be assailed by the crowd which presses against them, seeming to
devour the raw meat with their eyes." They force a passage, enter the
shop in the rear, and it seems as if the time for distributing the meat
had come; the gendarmes, spurring their horses to a gallop, scatter the
groups that are too dense; "rascals, in pay of the Commune," range the
women in files, two and two, "shivering" in the cold morning air of
December and January, awaiting their turn. Beforehand, however, the
butcher, according to law, sets aside the portion for the hospitals,
for pregnant women and others who are confined, for nurses, and
besides, notwithstanding the law, he sets aside another portion for the
revolutionary committee of the section, for the assistant commissioner
and superintendent, for the pashas and semi pashas of the quarter, and
finally for his rich customers who pay him extra.[4267] To this end,
"porters with broad shoulders form an impenetrable rampart in front of
the shop and carry away whole oxen;" after this is over, the women find
the shop stripped, while many, after wasting their time for four mortal
hours," go away empty handed.--With this prospect before them the daily
assemblages get to be uneasy and the waves rise; nobody, except those
at the head of the row, is sure of his pittance those that are behind
regard enviously and with suppressed anger the person ahead of them.
First come outcries, then jeering and then scuffling; the women rival
the men in struggling and in profanity,[4268] and they hustle each
other. The line suddenly breaks; each rushes to get ahead of the other;
the foremost place belongs to the most robust and the most brutal, and
to secure it they have to trample down their neighbors.

There are fisticuffs every day. When an assemblage remains quiet the
spectators take notice of it. In general "they fight,[4269] snatch bread
out of each other's hands; those who cannot get any forcing whoever gets
a loaf weighing four pounds to share it in small pieces. The women yell
frightfully.... Children s