g along the streets. Those of the first degree continue to meet
after having nominated those of the second: the nation must needs
watch its mandatories and maintain its imprescriptible rights. If this
exercise of their rights has been delegated to them, they still belong
to the nation, and it reserves to itself the privilege of interposing
when it pleases. A pretension of this kind travels fast; immediately
after the Third-Estate of the Assemblies it reaches the Third-Estate
of the streets. Nothing is more natural than the desire to lead one's
leaders: the first time any dissatisfaction occurs, they lay hands on
those who halt and make them march on as directed. On a Saturday,
April 25th,[1211] a rumor is current that Reveillon, an elector
and manufacturer of wall-paper, Rue Saint-Antoine, and Lerat, a
commissioner, have "spoken badly" at the Electoral Assembly of
Sainte-Marguerite. To speak badly means to speak badly of the people.
What has Reveillon said? Nobody knows, but popular imagination with
its terrible powers of invention and precision, readily fabricates or
welcomes a murderous phrase. He said that "a working-man with a wife and
children could live on fifteen sous a day." Such a man is a traitor, and
must be disposed of at once; "all his belongings must be put to fire and
sword." The rumor, it must be noted, is false.[1212] Reveillon pays
his poorest workman twenty-five sous a day, he provides work for three
hundred and fifty, and, in spite of a dull season the previous winter,
he kept all on at the same rate of wages. He himself was once a workman,
and obtained a medal for his inventions, and is benevolent and respected
by all respectable persons.--All this avails nothing; bands of vagabonds
and foreigners, who have just passed through the barriers, do not
look so closely into matters, while the Journeymen, the carters, the
cobblers, the masons, the braziers, and the stone-cutters whom they
go to solicit in their lodgings are just as ignorant as they are. When
irritation has accumulated, it breaks out haphazardly.

Just at this time the clergy of Paris renounce their privileges in way
of imposts,[1213] and the people, taking friends for adversaries, add in
their invectives the name of the clergy to that of Reveillon. During
the whole of the day, and also during the leisure of Sunday, the
fermentation increases; on Monday the 27th, another day of idleness and
drunkenness, the bands begin to move. Certain witne