La société révolutionnaire siégeait á Saint-Eustache; elle était composée de femmes perdues, aventurières de leur sexe, recrutées dans le vice, où dans les réduits de la misère, ou dans les cabanons de la démence. Le scandale de leurs séances, le tumulte de leurs motions, la bizarrerie de leur éloquence, l'audace de leurs pétitions importuna le Comité de Salut Public, qui ferma le club. On peut juger par là ce qu'il devait en être de la pauvre église. Près de là siégeait aussi le fameux club de la rue Mauconseil. Another club for women, founded by an actress named Lacombe, was dissolved after a speech of Robespierre's, in which we find that "Cette réunion de vraies sans-culottes ne saurait durer plus long-temps, parce qu'elle prête au ridicule et aux propos malins." In 1793 the Feast of Reason was celebrated with as much profanity and indecency here as at Notre-Dame, as witness Mercier's account, told in the forcible language of Carlyle: The corresponding festival in the church of S. Eustache offered the spectacle of a great tavern. The interior of the choir represented a landscape decorated with cottages and boskets of trees. Round the choir stood tables overloaded with bottles, with sausages, pork-puddings, pasties, and other meats. The guests flowed in and out through all doors; whosoever presented himself took part of the good things; children of eight, girls as well as boys, put hand to plate, in sign of Liberty; they drank also of the bottles, and their prompt intoxication created laughter. Reason sat in azure mantle aloft, in a serene manner; cannoneers, pipe in mouth, serving her as acolytes. And out of doors (continues the exaggerative man) were mad multitudes dancing round the bonfire of chapel-balustrades, of priests' and canons' stalls; and the dancers--I exaggerate nothing--the dancers nigh bare of breeches, neck and breast naked, stockings down, went whirling and spinning, like those Dust-vortexes, forerunners of Tempest and Destruction.[73] S. Eustache was re-opened for divine service sooner than many of the other churches, M. Poupart coming out of his hiding in June, 1795; but he had to share his church for some time with the philanthropists and the municipal councillors, who held their meetings there upon certain days. And the church was, moreover, but four walls and a roof; nearly all the contents had vanished. The altars, the bronze statues, the pulpit, the pictures, the tombs, the slabs and epitaphs, all but the _banc-d'œuvre_, had gone to the museum of the Petits-Augustins; happily, for otherwise they would have gone into the fire.