s to
exercise toward them "hospitality in all its plenitude, the sweetest
of Republican virtues."[1128] Hence, ninety-six sans-culottes, selected
from among the sections, wait on them at the Mayoralty to serve as their
correspondents, and perhaps as their guarantees, and certainly as pilots

* to give them lodging-tickets,

* to escort and install them,

* to indoctrinate them, as formerly with the federates of July, 1792,

* to prevent their getting into bad company,

* to introduce them into all the exciting meetings,

* to see that their ardent patriotism quickly rises to the proper
temperature of Parisian Jacobinism.[1129]

The theaters must not offend their eyes or ears with pieces "opposed
to the spirit of the Revolution."[1130] An order is issued for the
performance three times a week of "republican tragedies, such as
'Brutus', 'William Tell', 'Caius Gracchus,' and other dramas suitable
for the maintenance of the principles of equality and liberty." Once a
week the theaters must be free, when Chenier's alexandrines are spouted
on the stage to the edification of the delegates, crowded into the boxes
at the expense of the State. The following morning, led in groups into
the tribunes of the Convention,[1131] they there find the same, classic,
simple, declamatory, sanguinary tragedy, except that the latter is not
feigned but real, and the tirades are in prose instead of in verse.
Surrounded by paid yappers like victims for the ancient Romans
celebrations of purifications, our provincials applaud, cheer and get
excited, the same as on the night before at the signal given by the
claqueurs and the regulars. Another day, the procureur-syndic Lhullier
summons them to attend the "Eveche," to "fraternize with the authorities
of the Paris department;"[1132] the "Fraternite" section invites them
to its daily meetings; the Jacobin club lends them its vast hall in
the morning and admits them to its sessions in the evening.--Thus
monopolized and kept, as in a diving bell, they breathe in Paris nothing
but a Jacobin atmosphere; from one Jacobin den to another, as they are
led about in this heated atmosphere, their pulse beats more rapidly.
Many of them, who, on their arrival, were "plain, quiet people,"[1133]
but out of their element, subjected to contagion without any antidote,
quickly catch the revolutionary fever. The same as at an American
revival, under the constant pressure of preaching and singing, of shouts
and ne