hile the populace basks
in the sun the destiny of the city is being decided.--"M. Desmarest is
elected for the 9th Arrondissement," says some one close to
me.--"Lesueur is capital in the 'Partie de Piquet,'" says another. Oh!
people of Paris!

XIX.

It is over. We have a "Municipal Council," according to some; a
"Commune," according to others. Not quite legally elected, but
sufficiently so. Eighty councillors, sixty of whom are quite unknown
men. Who can have recommended them, or, rather, imposed them on the
electors? Can there really be some occult power at work under cover of
the ex-Central Committee? Is the Commune only a pretext, and are we at
the debut of a social and political revolution? I overheard a partizan
of the new doctrines say,--"The Proletariat is vindicating its rights,
which have been unjustly trampled on by the aristocratic bourgeoisie.
This is the workman's 1789!"

Another person expresses the same thing in rather a different form.
"This is the revolt of the _canaille_ against all kind of supremacy, the
supremacy of fortune, and the supremacy of intellect. The equality of
man before the law has been acknowledged, now they want to proclaim the
equality of intellect. Soon universal suffrage will give place to the
drawing of lots. There was a time in Athens when the names of the
archontes were taken haphazard out of a bag, like the numbers at loto."

However, the revolution has not yet clearly defined its tendencies, and
in the meantime what are we to think of the unknown beings who represent
it? A man in whom I have the greatest confidence, and who has passed his
life in studying questions of social science, and who therefore has
mixed in nearly all the revolutionary circles, and is personally
acquainted with the chiefs, said to me just now, in speaking of the new
Municipal Council,[23]--"It will be an assemblage of a very motley
character. There will be much good and much bad in it. We may safely
divide it into three distinct parts: firstly, ten or twelve men
belonging to the International, who have both thought and studied and
may be able to act, mixed with these several foreigners; secondly, a
number of young men, ardent but inexperienced, some of whom are imbued
with Jacobin principles; thirdly, and by far the largest portion,
unsuccessful plotters in former revolutions, journalists, orators, and
conspirators,--noisy, active, and effervescent, having no particular tie
amongst themselve