mous post-master, Drouet, who, in the tribune at the Convention,
declared himself a "brigand,"[3304]

* Javogues, the robber of Montbrison and the "Nero of Ain,"

* the drunkard Casset, formerly a silk-worker and later the pasha of
Thionville,

* Bertrand, the friend of Charlier, the ex-mayor and executioner of
Lyons,

* Darthe, ex-secretary of Lebon and the executioner at Arras,

* Rossignol and nine other Septembriseurs of the Abbaye and the
Carmelites, and, finally, the great apostle of despotic communism,

* Babeuf, who, sentenced to twenty years in irons for the falsification
of public contracts, and as needy as he is vicious, rambles about Paris
airing his disappointed ambitions and empty pockets along with the
swaggering crew who, if not striving to reach the throne by a new
massacre,[3305] tramp through the streets slipshod, for lack of money
"to redeem a pair of boots at the shoemakers," or to sell some snuff-box
their last resource, for a morning dram.[3306]

In this class we see the governing rabble fully and distinctly.
Separated from its forced adherents and the official robots who serve it
as they would any other power, it stands out pure and unalloyed by
any neutral influx; we recognize here the permanent residue, the deep,
settled slime of the social sewer. It is to this sink of vice and
ignorance that the revolutionary government betakes itself for its
staff-officers and its administrative bodies.

Nowhere else could they be found. For the daily task imposed upon them,
and which must be done by them, is robbery and murder; excepting the
pure fanatics, who are few in number, only brutes and blackguards
have the aptitudes and tastes for such business. In Paris, as in the
provinces, it is from the clubs or popular associations in which they
congregate, that they are sought for.--Each section of Paris contains
one of these clubs, in all forty-eight, rallied around the central club
in the Rue St. Honore, forty-eight district alliances of professional
rioters and brawlers, the rebels and blackguards of the social army, all
the men and women incapable of devoting themselves to a regular life and
useful labor,[3307] especially those who, on the 31st of May and 2nd of
June, had aided the Paris Commune and the "Mountain" in violating the
Convention. They recognize each other by this sign that, "each would
be hung in case of a counter-revolution,"[3308] laying it down "as an
incontestable fact that, shoul