fisherwomen, and next the greengrocers, of the town market halls
come to recommend the interests of the people to the bodies of
electors, and to sing rhymes in honor of the Third-Estate. In the
month of June pamphlets are in all hands; "even lackeys are poring
over them at the gates of hotels." In the month of July, as the King
is signing an order, a patriotic valet becomes alarmed and reads it
over his shoulder. -- There is no illusion here; it is not merely
the bourgeoisie which ranges itself against the legal authorities
and against the established regime. It is the entire people as
well. The craftsmen, the shopkeepers and the domestics, workmen of
every kind and degree, the mob underneath the people, the vagabonds,
street rovers, and beggars, the whole multitude, which, bound down
by anxiety for its daily bread, had never lifted its eyes to look at
the great social order of which it is the lowest stratum, and the
whole weight of which it bears.

III.

The Réveillon affair.

Suddenly the people stirs, and the superposed scaffolding totters.
It is the movement of a brute nature exasperated by want and
maddened by suspicion. -- Have paid hands, which are invisible
goaded it on from beneath? Contemporaries are convinced of this, and
it is probably the case.[10] But the uproar made around the
suffering brute would alone suffice to make it shy, and explain its
arousal. - On the 21st of April the Electoral Assemblies have
begun in Paris; there is one in each quarter, one for the clergy,
one for the nobles, and one for the Third-Estate. Every day, for
almost a month, files of electors are seen passing along the