s with them is now disgraceful.
Thus, the principal swath consists of the elite of the people,
selected from amongst the people itself; it is against the "subordinate
aristocracy," those most capable of doing and conducting manual labor,
the most creditable workmen, through their activity, frugality and good
habits, that the Revolution, in its rigor against the inferior class,
rages with the greatest fury.

VIII. Rigor against the Upper Classes.

The rigor of the revolutionary laws increase according to
the elevation of the class.--The Notables properly so called
attacked because of their being Notables.--Orders of
Taillefer, Milhaud, and Lefiot.--The public atonement of
Montargis.

For the same reason, as far as the notables, properly so-called, are
concerned, it bears down still more heavily, not merely on the nobles
because of ancient privileges, not merely on ecclesiastics on the score
of being insubordinate Catholics, but on nobles, ecclesiastics and
bourgeois in their capacity of notables, that is to say, born and bred
above others, and respected by the masses on account of their superior
condition.--In the eyes of the genuine Jacobin, the notables of the
third class are no less criminal than the members of the two superior
classes. "The bourgeois,[41113] the merchants, the large proprietors,"
writes a popular club in the South, "all have the pretension of the old
set (des ci-devants)." And the club complains of "the law not providing
means for opening the eyes of the people with respect to these new
tyrants." It is horrible! The stand they take is an offense against
equality and they are proud of it! And what is worse, this stand
attracts public consideration! Consequently, "the club requests that
the revolutionary Tribunal be empowered to consign this proud class to
temporary confinement," and then "the people would see the crime it had
committed and recover from the sort of esteem in which they had held
it."--Incorrigible and contemptuous heretics against the new creed,
they are only too lucky to be treated somewhat like infidel Jews in the
middle-ages. Accordingly, if they are tolerated, it is on the condition
that they let themselves be pillaged at discretion, covered with
opprobrium and subdued through fear.--At one time, with insulting irony,
they are called upon to prove their dubious civism by forced donations.
"Whereas,"[41114] says Representative Milhaud, "all the citiz