Saintonge. -- Brigandage is another: in the middle of the night M.
du Châtelet's spies, gliding alongside of a ditch, "see a group of
ruffians" assembled beyond the Barrière du Trône, their leader,
mounted on a little knoll, urging them to begin again; and the
following days, on the highways, vagabonds are saying to each other,
"We can do no more at Paris, because they are too sharp on the look-
out; let us go to Lyons!" There are, finally, the patriots: on the
evening of the insurrection, between the Pont-au-Change and the
Pont-Marie, the half-naked ragamuffins, besmeared with dirt, bearing
along their hand-barrows, are fully alive to their cause; they beg
alms in a loud tone of voice, and stretch out their hats to the
passers, saying, "Take pity on this poor Third-Estate!" -- The
starving, the ruffians, and the patriots, all form one body, and
henceforth misery, crime, and public spirit unite to provide an
ever-ready insurrection for the agitators who desire to raise one.


IV. The Palais-Royal.

But the agitators are already in permanent session. The Palais-
Royal is an open-air club where, all day and even far into the
night, one excites the other and urges on the crowd to blows. In
this enclosure, protected by the privileges of the House of Orleans,
the police dare not enter. Speech is free, and the public who avail
themselves of this freedom seem purposely chosen to abuse it. --
The public and the place are adapted to each other.[18] The Palais-
Royal, the center of prostitution, of play, of idleness, and of
pamphlets, attracts the whole of that uprooted population which
floats about in a great city, and which, without occupation or home,
lives only for curiosity or for pleasure -- the frequenters of the