in the mud." On the following day an ecclesiastic is trodden under foot, and flung from hand to hand. A few days after, on the 22nd of June, there are two similar events. The sovereign mob exercises all the functions of sovereign authority, with those of the legislator those of the judge, and those of the judge with those of the executioner.--Its idols are sacred; if any one fails to show them respect he is guilty of lése-majesté, and at once punished. In the first week of July, an abbé who speaks ill of Necker is flogged; a woman who insults the bust of Necker is stripped by the fishwomen, and beaten until she is covered with blood. War is declared against suspicious uniforms. "On the appearance of a hussar," writes Desmoulins, "they shout, 'There goes Punch!' and the stone-cutters fling stones at him. Last night two officers of the hussars, MM. de Sombreuil and de Polignac, came to the Palais-Royal. . . chairs were flung at them, and they would have been knocked down if they had not run away. The day before yesterday they seized a spy of the police and gave him a ducking in the fountain. They ran him down like a stag, hustled him, pelted him with stones, struck him with canes, forced one of his eyes out of its socket, and finally, in spite of his entreaties and cries for mercy, plunged him a second time in the fountain. His torments lasted from noon until half-past five o'clock, and he had about ten thousand executioners."--Consider the effect of such a focal center at a time like this. A new power has sprung up alongside the legal powers, a legislature of the highways and public squares, anonymous, irresponsible, without restraint. It is driven onward by coffeehouse theories, by strong emotions and the vehemence of mountebanks, while the bare arms which have just accomplished the work of destruction in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, form its bodyguard and ministerial cabinet. V.--Popular mobs become a political force. Pressure on the Assembly.--Defection of the soldiery.