But coal-heavers are useful citizens of the State; so are smiths and armourers and gunmakers, and those who can sew and knit stockings, do anything in fact to clothe and feed the national army, the defenders of the sacred soil of France. For them, for these workers--the honest, the industrious, the sober--are the Fraternal Suppers invented; but not for them only. There are the "tricotteuses," sexless hags, who, by order of the State, sit at the foot of the scaffold surrounded by their families and their children and knit, and knit, the while they jeer--still by order of the State, at the condemned--old men, young women, children even, as they walk up to the guillotine. There are the "insulteuses publiques," public insulters, women mostly--save the mark!--paid to howl and blaspheme as the death-carts rattle by. There are the "tappe-durs," the hit-hards, who, armed with weighted sticks, form the bodyguard around the sacred person of Robespierre. Then, the members of the Société Révolutionnaire, recruited from the refuse of misery and of degradation of this great city; and--oh, the horror of it all!--the "Enfants Rouges," the red children, who cry "Death" and "à la lanterne" with the best of them--precocious little offsprings of the new Republic. For them, too, are the Fraternal Suppers established: for all the riff-raff, all the sweepings of abject humanity. For they too must be amused and entertained, lest they sit in clusters and talk themselves into the belief that they are more wretched, more indigent, more abased, than they were in the days of monarchical oppression. §2 And so, on these balmy evenings of mid-April family parties are gathered in the open air, around meagre suppers that are "fraternal" by order of the State. Family parties which make for camaraderie between the honest man and the thief, the sober citizen and the homeless vagabond, and help one to forget awhile the misery, the starvation, the slavery, the daily struggle for bare existence, in anticipation of the belated Millennium. There is even laughter around the festive boards, fun and frolic. Jokes are cracked, mostly of a grim order. There is intoxication in the air: spring has got into the heads of the young. And there is even kissing under the shadows, love-making, sentiment; and here and there perhaps a shred of real happiness. The provisions are scanty. Every family brings its own. Two or three herrings, sprinkled with shredded onions and wetted with a little vinegar, or else a few boiled prunes or a pottage of lentils and beans. "Can you spare some of that bread, citizen?" "Aye! if I can have a bite of your cheese."