Through the elections, the Jacobin advance-guard of fifty deputies is already posted there; while, owing to the fascination it has to excitable and despotic natures, to brutal temperaments, narrow, disjointed minds, weak imaginations, doubtful honesty, and old religious or social rancor, it succeeds in doubling this number at the end of six months.3414 On the benches of the extreme "Left," around Robespierre, Danton and Marat, the original nucleus of the September faction, sit men of their stamp, first, the corrupt, like Chabot, Tallien and Barras, wretches like FouchÉ, Guffroy and Javogues, crazy enthusiasts like David, savage maniacs like Carrier, paltry simpletons like Joseph Lebon, common fanatics like Levasseur, Baubot, Jeanbon-Saint-AndrÉ, Romme and Lebas. Add also, and especially, the future iron-handed representatives, uncouth, authoritarian, and narrow-minded, excellent troopers for a political militia, Bourbotte, Duquesnoy, Rewbell, and Bentabole, "a lot of ignorant bastards," said Danton,3415 "without any common sense, and patriotic only when drunk. Marat is nothing but a bawler. Legendre is fit for nothing but to cut up his meat. The rest are good for little else than voting by either sitting down or standing up, but they are cold blooded and have broad shoulders." From amongst these energetic nonentities we see ascending a young monster, with calm, handsome features, Saint-Just. He is a kind of precocious Sylla, 25 years old and a new-comer, who springs at once from the ranks and, by dint of atrocities, obtains a prominent position.3416 Six years before this he began life by a domestic robbery; on a visit to his mother, he left the house during the night, carrying off the plate and jewels, which he squandered while living in a lodging house in the Rue Fromenteau, in the center of Parisian prostitution;3417 on the strength of this, and at the demand of his friends, he is shut up in a house of correction for six months. On returning to his lodgings he occupied himself with writing an obscene poem in the style of La Pucelle and then, through a fit of rage resembling a spasm, he plunged headlong into the Revolution. He possessed a "blood calcified by study," a colossal pride, an unhinged conscience, a pompous, gloomy imagination haunted with the bloody recollections of Rome and Sparta, an intelligence so warped and twisted as to be comfortable only among excessive paradoxes, shameless sophistry, and devastating lies.3418 All these dangerous ingredients which, mingled in the crucible of suppressed, concentrated ambition, long and silently boiling within him, have led to a constant defiance, a determined callousness, an automatic rigidity, and to the summary politics of the Utopian dictator and exterminator.—It is plain that such a minority will not obey parliamentary rules, and, rather than yield to the majority that it will introduce into the debate boos and hisses, insults, threats, and scuffles with daggers, pistols, sabers and even the "blunder busses" of a veritable combat.

"Vile intriguers, calumniators, scoundrels, monsters, assassins, blackguards, fools and hogs," such are the usual terms in which they address each other, and these form the least of their outrages.3419 The president, at certain sessions, is obliged three times to put on his hat and, at last, breaks his bell. They insult him, force him to leave his seat and demand that "he be removed.' Bazire tries to snatch a declaration presented by him "out of his hands." Bourdon, from the department of Oise, cries out to him that if he "dares to read it he will assassinate him."3420 The chamber "has become an arena of gladiators."3421 Sometimes the entire "Mountain" darts from its benches on the left, while a similar human wave rolls down from those on the right; both clash in the center of the room amidst furious screams and shouts; in one of these hubbubs one of the "Mountain" having drawn a pistol the Girondist Duperret draws his sword.3422 After the middle of December prominent members of the "Right," constantly persecuted, threatened and outraged," reduced to "being out every night, are compelled to carry arms in self-defense,"3423 and, after the King's execution, "almost all" bring them to the sessions of the Convention. Any day, indeed, they may look for the final attack, and they are not disposed to die unavenged: during the night of March 9, finding that they are only forty-three, they agree to launch themselves in a body "at the first hostile movement, against their adversaries and kill as many as possible" before perishing.3424

It is a desperate resource, but the only one. For, besides the madmen belonging to the Convention, they have against them the madmen in the galleries, and these likewise are September murderers. The vilest Jacobin rabble purposely takes its stand near them, at first in the old Riding-school, and then in the new hall in the Tuileries. They see above and in a circle around them drilled adversaries, eight or nine hundred heads packed "in the great gallery at the bottom, under a deep and silent vault," and, besides these, on the sides, a thousand or fifteen hundred more, two immense tribunes completely filled.3425 The galleries of the Constituent and Legislative Assemblies, compared with these, were calm. Nothing is more disgraceful to the Convention, writes a foreign spectator,3426 than the insolence of the audience. One of the regulations prohibits, indeed, any mark of approval or disapproval, "but it is violated every day, and nobody is ever punished for this delinquency." The majority in vain expresses its indignation at this "gang of hired ruffians," who beset and oppress it, while at the very time that it utters its complaints, it endures and tolerates it. "The struggle is frightful," says a deputy,3427 "screams, murmurs, stampings, shouts... The foulest insults were launched from the galleries." "For a long time," says another, "no one can speak here without obtaining their permission."3428 The day that Buzot obtains the floor to speak against Marat, "they break out furiously, yelling, stamping, and threatening";3429 every time that Buzot tries to begin his voice is drowned in the clamor, while he remains half an hour in the tribune without completing a sentence. On the calls of the House, especially, their cries resemble those of the excited crowd at a Spanish bull-fight, with their eager eyes and heaving breasts, watching the contest between the bull and the picadores; every time that a deputy votes against the death of the King or for an appeal to the people, there are the "vociferations of cannibals," and "interminable yells" every time that one votes for the indictment of Marat. "I declare," say deputies in the tribune, "that I am not free here; I declare that I am forced to debate under the knife."3430 Charles Villette is told at the entrance that "if he does not vote for the King's death he will be massacred."—And these are not empty threats. On the 10th of March, awaiting the promised riot, "the tribunes, duly advised,... had already loaded their pistols."3431 In the month of May, the tattered women hired for the purpose, under the title of "Ladies of the Fraternity," formed a club, came daily early in the morning to mount guard, with arms in their hands, in the corridors of the Convention; they tear up all tickets given to men or women not of their band; they take possession of all the seats, show pistols and daggers, and declare that "eighteen hundred heads must be knocked off to make things go on right."

Behind these two first rows of assailants is a third, much more compact, the more fearful because it is undefined and obscure, namely, the vague multitude forming the anarchical set, scattered throughout Paris, and always ready to renew the 10th of August and 2nd of September against the obstinate majority. Incendiary motions and demands for riots come incessantly from the Commune, and Jacobin, Cordeliers, and l'EvÊchÉ clubs; from the assemblies of the sections and groups stationed at the Tuileries and in the streets. "Yesterday," writes the president of the Tuileries section,3433 "at the same moment, at various points about Paris, the Rue du Bac, at the Marais, in the Church of St. Eustache, at the Palace of the Revolution, on the Feuillants terrace, scoundrels were preaching pillage and assassination."—On the following day, again on the Feuillants terrace, that is to say, right under the windows of the Convention, "they urge the assassination of Louvel for having denounced Robespierre. "—Minister Roland writes: "I hear of nothing but conspiracy and plans to murder."—Three weeks later, for several days, "an up-rising is announced in Paris";3434 the Minister is warned that "alarm guns would be fired," while the heads are designated beforehand on which this ever muttering insurrection will burst. In the following month, in spite of the recent precise law, "the electoral assembly prints and circulates gratis the list of members of the Feuillants and Sainte-Chapelle clubs; it likewise orders the printing and circulation of the list of the eight thousand, and of the twenty thousand, as well as of the clubs of 1789 and of Montaigu."3435 In January, "hawkers cry through the streets a list of the aristocrats and royalists who voted for an appeal to the people."3436 Some of the appelants are singled out by name through placards; Thibaut, bishop of Cantal, while reading the poster on the wall relating to him, hears some one along side of him say: "I should like to know that bishop of Cantal; I would make bread tasteless to him." Roughs point out certain deputies leaving the Assembly, and exclaim: "Those are the beggars to cut up!"—From week to week signs of insurrection increase and multiply, like flashes of lightning in a coming tempest. On the 1st of January, "it is rumored that the barriers are to be closed at night, and that domiciliary visits are going to begin again."3437 On the 7th of January, on the motion of the Gravilliers section, the Commune demands of the Minister of War 132 cannon stored at Saint Denis, to divide among the sections. On the 15th of January the same section proposes to the other forty-seven to appoint, as on the 10th of August, special commissaries to meet at the EvÊchÉ and watch over public safety. That same day, to prevent the Convention from misunderstanding the object of these proceedings, it is openly stated in the tribunes that the cannon brought to Paris "are for another 10th of August against that body." The same day, military force has to be employed to prevent bandits from going to the prisons "to renew the massacres." On the 28th of January the Palais-Royal, the resort of the pleasure-seeking, is surrounded by Santerre, at eight o'clock in the evening, and "about six thousand men, found without a certificate of civism," are arrested, subject to the decision one by one of their section.—Not only does the lightning flash, but already the bolt descends in isolated places.3438 On the 31st of December a man named Louvain, formerly denounced by Marat as Lafayette's agent, is slain in the faubourg St. Antoine, and his corpse dragged through the streets to the Morgue. On the 25th of February, the grocer shops are pillaged at the instigation of Marat, with the connivance or sanction of the Commune. On the 9th of March the printing establishment of Gorsas is sacked by two hundred men armed with sabers and pistols. The same evening and on the next morning the riot extends to the Convention itself; "the committee of the Jacobin club summons every section in Paris to arms to "get rid" of the appelant deputies and the ministers; the Cordeliers club requests the Parisian authorities "to take sovereignty into their own hands and place the treacherous deputies under arrest"; Fournier, Varlet, and Champion ask the Commune "to declare itself in insurrection and close the barriers"; all the approaches to the Convention are occupied by the "dictators of massacre," PÉtion3439 and Beurnonville being recognized on their passing, pursued and in danger of death, while furious mobs gather on the Feuillants terrace "to award popular judgment," "to cut off heads" and "send them into the departments."—Luckily, it rains, which always cools down popular effervescence. KervÉlegan, a deputy from FinistÈre, who escapes, finds means of sending to the other end of the faubourg St. Marceau for a battalion of volunteers from Brest that had arrived a few days before, and who were still loyal; these come in time and save the Convention.—Thus does the majority live under the triple pressure of the "Mountain," the galleries and the outside populace, and from month to month, especially after March 10, the pressure gets to be worse and worse.