With regard to producers and sellers, we may go back to the simile of the strong castle. An instrument of defence for those who were within the guild easily degenerated into one of tyranny for those who were without. It was the centre of an ardent and exclusive corporate spirit. It resolved all the individual egoisms of its members into a great collective egoism. It is only necessary to recall the quarrels with neighbouring guilds, and the hostility shown towards workers who were not enrolled. To the masters of which it was composed it ensured at least a modest and honest livelihood, the just remuneration of labour, or, one might almost say, to use a modern formula, the whole product of labour. It even assured a refuge against misery and distress, the certainty of assistance in times of trouble, illness, old age, or misfortune. The fishermen of Arles were bound to give one another mutual assistance in stormy weather;[91] in Paris among the goldsmiths one shop remained open every Sunday,[92] and the money from the sales was divided among the needy of the town and the widows and sick of the guild. Fines were often used in this way. The guild sometimes even gave to the travelling workman who found himself at the end of his resources the means of going in search of work elsewhere. The guild secured to its members other advantages no less coveted: a good position in public processions and ceremonies when state dress was worn, or even at the melancholy solemnities of the public executions;[93] at Lyons, at the time of the feast of St. John, two furriers with lighted torches paraded to the church door, mounted on two white mules, and at the entrance were received by the cross and the canons.[94] But more than all this, the guild was not only a great family for those who belonged to it, it was a little self-contained city, a diminutive commune which the members administered at will, and thereby prepared themselves for civic life and its duties; it was a training-ground for independent, well-informed, active citizens, who, with their parliamentary traditions, republican sentiments, and democratic hopes, formed, with their fellow-craftsmen of other crafts, a proud, practical, and courageous middle-class, as anxious to defend their town from outsiders as to beautify and adorn it. Journeymen and apprentices shared in these honourable privileges, and did not suffer unduly from the inequality imposed on them, tempered as it was by simplicity of manners and by the thought that it was only temporary.