and propose measures for murder "in infuriate language and with fiery
gesticulation." Such are the good speakers[3349] and men for show. The
others, who remain silent, and hardly know to write, act and do the
rough work. A certain Chalaudon, member of the Commune,[3350] is one of
this kind, president of the Revolutionary Committee of the section
of "L'Homme armé," and probably an excellent man-hunter; for "the
government committees assigned to him the duty of watching the right
bank of the Seine, and, with extraordinary powers conferred on him, he
rules from his back shop one half of Paris. Woe to those he has reason
to complain of, those who have withdrawn from, or not given him, their
custom! Sovereign of his quarter up to Thermidor 10, his denunciations
are death-warrants. Some of the streets, especially that of Grand
Chantier, he "depopulates." And this Marais exterminator is a "cobbler,"
a colleague in leather, as well as in the Commune, of Simon the
shoemaker, the preceptor and murderer of the young Dauphin.
Still lower down than this admirable municipal body, let us try
to imagine, from at least one complete example, the forty-eight
revolutionary committees who supply it with hands.--There is one of them
of which we know all the members, where the governing class, under full
headway, can be studied on the spot and in action.[3351] This consists
of the underworld, nomadic class which is revolutionary only through
its appetites; no theory and no convictions animate it; during the first
three years of the Revolution it pays no attention to, or cares for,
public matters; if, since the 10th of August, and especially since the
2nd of June, it takes any account of these, it is to get a living and
gorge itself with plunder.--Out of eighteen members, simultaneously
or in succession, of the "Bonnet Rouge," fourteen, before the 10th
of August and especially since the 2nd of June, are unknown in this
quarter, and had taken no part in the Revolution. The most prominent
among these are three painters, heraldic, carriage and miniature,
evidently ruined and idle on account of the Revolution, a candle-dealer,
a vinegar-dealer, a manufacturer of saltpeter, and a locksmith; while of
these seven personages, four have additionally enhanced the dignity
of their calling by vending tickets for small lotteries, acting as
pawnbrokers or as keepers of a biribi[3352] saloon. Seated along with
these are two upper-class domestics, a hack-driver, an ex-gendarme
dismissed from the corps, a cobbler on the street corner, a runner on
errands who was once a carter's boy, and another who, two months before
this, was a scavenger's apprentice, the latter penniless and in tatters
before he became one of the Committee, and since that, well clad, lodged
and furnished. Finally, a former dealer in lottery-tickets, himself a
counterfeiter by his own admission, and a jail-bird. Four others have
been dismissed from their places for dishonesty or swindling, three are
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