Yes, people complain, grow angry, suffer, but they are not bored. How many incidents, episodes, emotions, there are in this strange tragi-comedy! Everywhere there is something to be seen; in the Assembly, the clubs, the public places, the promenades, streets, cafés, and theatres. Brawls and discussions are heard on every side. If by chance a salon is still open, disputes go on there as they would at a club. What quarrels take place in the cafés! Men stand on chairs and tables to spout. And what dissensions in the theatres! The actors meddle with politics as well as the spectators. In the greenroom of the _Comédie-Française_ there is a right side, whose chief is the royalist Naudet, and a left side led by the republican Talma. Neither actor goes out except well armed. There are pistols {11} underneath their togas. The kings of tragedy, threatened by their political adversaries, have real poniards wherewith to defend themselves. _Les Horaces, Brutus, La Mort de César, Barnevelt, Guillaume Tell, Charles IX._, are plays containing in each tirade allusions which inflame the boxes and the pit. The theatre is a tilting-ground. If the royalists are there in force, they cause the orchestra to play their favorite airs: _Charmante Gabrielle, Vive Henri Quatre! O! Richard, O! mon roi!_ The revolutionists protest, and sing their own chosen melody, the _Ça ira_. Sometimes they come to blows, swords are drawn, and, the play over, elegant women are dragged through the gutters. There is a general outbreak of insults and violence. The journals play the chief part in this universal madness. Sometimes the press is eloquent, but it is oftener ribald or atrocious. To borrow an expression from Montaigne, "it lowers itself even to the worthless esteem of extreme inferiority." The beautiful French tongue, once so correct and pure, is no longer recognizable. Vulgar words fall thick as hail. To the language of the Academy has succeeded the jargon of the markets. What a swarm! what a swirl! How noisy, how restless, is this revolutionary Paris! What excited crowds fill the clubs, the Assembly, the Palais Royal, the gambling-houses, and the tumultuous faubourgs! Riotous gatherings, popular deputations, detachments of cavalry, companies of {12} foot-soldiers; gentlemen in French coats, powdered hair, swords at their sides, hats under their arms, silk stockings and low shoes; democrats close-cropped and unpowdered, with English frock coats and American cravats; ragged _sans-culottes_ in red caps, weave in and out in ceaseless motion.