d sing; where the president, Lubin,
"decorated with his scarf," shouts the Marseilles Hymn five or six
times, "Ca Ira," and other songs of several stanzas, set to tunes of
the Comic Opera, and always "out of time, displaying the voice, airs
and songs of an exquisite Leander.. . I really believe that, at the
last meeting, he sung alone in this manner three quarters of an hour
at different times, the assembly repeating the last line of the
verse."--"How odd!" exclaims a common woman alongside of Morellet, "how
droll, passing all their time here, singing in that fashion! Is that
what they come here for?"--Not alone for that: after the circus-parade
is over, the ordinary haranguers, and especially the hair-dresser, come
and propose measures for murder "in infuriate language and with fiery
gesticulation." Such are the good speakers[3349] and men for show. The
others, who remain silent, and hardly know to write, act and do the
rough work. A certain Chalaudon, member of the Commune,[3350] is one of
this kind, president of the Revolutionary Committee of the section
of "L'Homme arme," and probably an excellent man-hunter; for "the
government committees assigned to him the duty of watching the right
bank of the Seine, and, with extraordinary powers conferred on him, he
rules from his back shop one half of Paris. Woe to those he has reason
to complain of, those who have withdrawn from, or not given him, their
custom! Sovereign of his quarter up to Thermidor 10, his denunciations
are death-warrants. Some of the streets, especially that of Grand
Chantier, he "depopulates." And this Marais exterminator is a "cobbler,"
a colleague in leather, as well as in the Commune, of Simon the
shoemaker, the preceptor and murderer of the young Dauphin.

Still lower down than this admirable municipal body, let us try
to imagine, from at least one complete example, the forty-eight
revolutionary committees who supply it with hands.--There is one of them
of which we know all the members, where the governing class, under full
headway, can be studied on the spot and in action.[3351] This consists
of the underworld, nomadic class which is revolutionary only through
its appetites; no theory and no convictions animate it; during the first
three years of the Revolution it pays no attention to, or cares for,
public matters; if, since the 10th of August, and especially since the
2nd of June, it takes any account of these, it is to get a living and
gorge itse