m been seen in daylight. . . Where do they come from?
Who has brought them out of their obscure hiding places?. . . strangers
from everywhere, armed with clubs, ragged,. . . some almost naked,
others oddly dressed" in incongruous patches and "frightful to look at,"
constitute the riotous chiefs or their subordinates, at six francs per
head, behind which the people are to march.

"At Paris," says Mercier,[5350] "the people are weak, pallid,
diminutive, stunted," maltreated, "and, apparently, a class apart
from other classes in the country. The rich and the great who possess
equipages, enjoy the privilege of crushing them or of mutilating them in
the streets. . . There is no convenience for pedestrians, no side-walks.
Hundred victims die annually under the carriage wheels." "I saw," says
Arthur Young, "a poor child run over and probably killed, and have been
myself several times been covered from head to toe with the water from
the gutter. Should young (English) noblemen drive along London streets
without sidewalks, in the same manner as their equals in Paris, they
would speedily and justly get very well thrashed and rolled in the
gutter."

Mercier grows uneasy in the face of the immense populace:

"In Paris there are, probably, 200,000 persons with no property
intrinsically worth fifty crowns, and yet the city subsists!"

Order, consequently, is maintained only through fear and by force,
owing to the soldiery of the watch who are called tristes-a-patte by the
crowd. "This nick name enrages this species of militia, who then deal
heavier blows around them, wounding indiscriminately all they encounter.
The low class is always ready to make war on them because it has never
been fairly treated by them." In fact, "a squad of the guard often
scatters, with no trouble, crowds of five or six hundred men, at first
greatly excited, but melting away in the twinkling of an eye, after the
soldiery have distributed a few blows and handcuffed two or three of
the ringleaders."--Nevertheless, "were the people of Paris abandoned
to their true inclinations, did they not feel the horse and foot guards
behind them, the commissary and policeman, there would be no limits to
their disorder. The populace, delivered from its customary restraint,
would give itself up to violence of so cruel a stamp as not to know when
to stop. . . As long as white bread lasts,[5351] the commotion will
not prove general; the flour market[5352] must interest itsel