in, in this minority there are a good many who
are lukewarm; with most men the distance is great between conviction and
action; the interval is filled up with acquired habits, indolence, fear
and egoism. One's belief in the abstractions of the "Contrat-social" is
of little account; no one readily bestirs oneself for an abstract end.
Uncertainties beset one at the outset; the road one has to follow is
found to be perilous and obscure, and one hesitates and postpones; one
feels himself a home-body and is afraid of engaging too deeply and of
going too far. Having expended one's breath in words one is less willing
to give one's money; another may open his purse but he may not be
disposed to give himself, which is as true of the Girondins as it is of
the Feuillants.

"At Marseilles,[1159] at Bordeaux," says a deputy, "in nearly all the
principal towns, the proprietor, slow, indifferent and timid, could not
make up his mind to leave home for a moment; it was to mercenaries that
he entrusted his cause his arms."

Only the federates of Mayenne, Ile-et-Vilaine, and especially of
Finisterre, were "young men well brought up and well informed about the
cause they were going to support." In Normandy, the Central Committee,
unable to do better, has to recruit its soldiers, and especially
gunners, from the band of Carabots, former Jacobins, a lot of ruffians
ready for anything, pillagers and runaways at the first canon-shot.
At Caen, Wimpffen, having ordered the eight battalions of the National
Guard to assemble in the court, demands volunteers and finds that only
seventeen step forth; on the following day a formal requisition brings
out only one hundred and thirty combatants; other towns, except Vire,
which furnishes about twenty, refuse their contingent. In short, a
marching army cannot be formed, or, if it does march, it halts at
the first station, that of Evreux before reaching Vernon, and that of
Marseilles at the walls of Avignon.

On the other hand, by virtue of being sincere and logical, those who
have rebelled entertain scruples and themselves define the limits of
their insurrection. The fugitive deputies at their head would believe
themselves guilty of usurpation had they, like the "Mountain" at Paris,
constituted themselves at Caen en sovereign assembly[1160]: according
to them, their right and their duty is reduced to giving testimony
concerning the 31st of May and the 1st of June, and to exhorting the
people and to bei