g anything, never quit the bars, where, night and day,
they revel;" their chief, a financial ex-procureur, now "concierge,
archivist, secretary and president of the popular club," holds municipal
council in the tavern. "Should they go out it was to chase female
aristocrats," and one of them declares "that if the half of Aignay were
slaughtered the other half would be all the better for it."--There
is nothing like drinking to excite ferocity to the highest pitch. At
Strasbourg the sixty mustachioed propagandist lodged in the college in
which they are settled fixtures, have a cook provided for them by the
town, and they revel day and night "on the choice provisions put
in requisition," "on wines destined to the defenders of the
country."[33106] It is, undoubtedly, when coming out from one of these
orgies that they proceed, sword in hand, to the popular club,[33107]
vote and force others to vote "death to all prisoners confined in the
Seminary to the number of seven hundred, of every age and of both sexes,
without any preliminary trial." For a man to become a good cut-throat,
he must first get intoxicated;[33108] such was the course pursued
in Paris by those who did the work in September: the revolutionary
government being an organized, prolonged and permanent Septembrisade,
most of its agents are obliged to drink hard.[33109]--For the same
reasons when the opportunity, as well as the temptation, to steal,
presents itself, they steal.--At first, during six months, and up to the
decree assigning them pay, the revolutionary committees "take their pay
themselves;"[33110] they then add to their legal salary of three and
five francs a day about what they please: for it is they who assess the
extraordinary taxes, and often, as at Montbrison, "without making any
list or record of collections." On Frimaire 16, year II., the financial
committee reports that "the collection and application of extraordinary
taxes is unknown to the government; that it was impossible to supervise
them, the National treasury having received no sums whatever arising
from these taxes."[33111] Two years after, four years after, the
accounts of revolutionary taxation of forced loans, and of pretended
voluntary gifts, still form a bottomless pit; out of forty billions of
accounts rendered to the National Treasury only twenty are found to be
verified; the rest are irregular and worthless. Besides, in many cases,
not only is the voucher worthless or not forthcom