judge, and those of the judge with those of the executioner. -- Its
idols are sacred; if any one fails to show them respect he is guilty
of lése-majesté, and at once punished. In the first week of July,
an abbé who speaks ill of Necker is flogged; a woman who insults the
bust of Necker is stripped by the fishwomen, and beaten until she is
covered with blood. War is declared against suspicious uniforms.
"On the appearance of a hussar," writes Desmoulins, "they shout,
'There goes Punch!' and the stone-cutters fling stones at him. Last
night two officers of the hussars, MM. de Sombreuil and de Polignac,
came to the Palais-Royal. . . chairs were flung at them, and they
would have been knocked down if they had not run away. The day
before yesterday they seized a spy of the police and gave him a
ducking in the fountain. They ran him down like a stag, hustled
him, pelted him with stones, struck him with canes, forced one of
his eyes out of its socket, and finally, in spite of his entreaties
and cries for mercy, plunged him a second time in the fountain. His
torments lasted from noon until half-past five o'clock, and he had
about ten thousand executioners." -- Consider the effect of such a
focal center at a time like this. A new power has sprung up
alongside the legal powers, a legislature of the highways and public
squares, anonymous, irresponsible, without restraint. It is driven
onward by coffeehouse theories, by strong emotions and the vehemence
of mountebanks, while the bare arms which have just accomplished the
work of destruction in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, form its
bodyguard and ministerial cabinet.

V.

Popular mobs become a political force. - Pressure on the Assembly. -
Defection of the soldiery.