own house.
"Lejeune, to feed his bloodthirsty imagination, had a small guillotine
put up, on which he cut off the heads of all the poultry consumed at his
table.... Often, in the middle of the repast, he had it brought in and
set to work for the amusement of his guests." (Moniteur, XXIV., 607,
session of June 1, 1795, letter from the district of Besancon, and
with the letter, the confirmatory document.) "This guillotine, says the
reporter, is deposited with the Committee of Legislation."]

CHAPTER III. THE RULERS. (continued).

I. The Central Government Administration.

The administrative body at Paris.--Composition of the group
out of which it was recruited.--Deterioration of this
group.--Weeding-out of the Section Assemblies.--Weeding out
of the popular clubs.--Pressure of the government.

To provide these local sovereigns with the subordinate lieutenants and
agents which they require, we have the local Jacobin population, and we
have seen the composition of the recruits,[3301]

* the distressed and the perverted of every class and degree, especially
the lowest,

* the castaways,

* envious and resentful subordinates,

* small shopkeepers in debt,

* the migrating, high-living workers,

* barflies,

* vagrants,

* men of the gutters,

* street-walkers,

--in short, every species of "anti-social vermin," male and
female,[3302] including a few honest crack-brains into which the
fashionable theory had freely found its way; the rest, and by far
the largest number, are veritable beasts of prey, speculating on the
established order of things and adopting the revolutionary faith only
because it provides food for their appetites.--In Paris, they number
five or six thousand, and, after Thermidor, there is about the same
number, the same appetites rallying them around the same dogma,[3303]
levelers and terrorists, "some because they are poor, others because
they have broken off the habit of working at their trade," furious with
"the scoundrels who own a coach house, against the rich and the hoarders
of objects of prime necessity." Many of them "having soiled themselves
during the Revolution, ready to do it again provided the rich rascals,
monopolists and merchants can all be killed," all "frequenters of
popular clubs who think themselves philosophers, although most of
them are unable to read," at the head of them the remnant of the most
notorious political bandits,

* the fa