25. the establishment of easy divorce at two months' notice and on demand of one of the parties,[26115] in short, every measure is taken which tend to disturb property, break up the family, persecute conscience, suspend the law, pervert justice, and rehabilitate crime. laws are promulgated to deliver:
* the judicial system,
* the full control of the nation,
* the selection of the members of the future omnipotent Assembly,
* in short, the entire government,
to an autocratic, violent minority, which, having risked all to grab the dictatorship, dares all to keep it.[26116]
VIII.—State of Paris in the Interregnum.
The mass of the population.—Subaltern Jacobins.—The
Jacobin leaders.
Let us stop a moment to contemplate this great city and its new rulers.—From afar, Paris seems a club of 700,000 fanatics, vociferating and deliberating on the public squares; near by, it is nothing of the sort. The slime, on rising from the bottom, has become the surface, and given its color to the stream; but the human stream flows in its ordinary channel, and, under this turbid exterior, remains about the same as it was before. It is a city of people like ourselves, governed, busy, and fond of amusement. To the great majority, even in revolutionary times, private life, too complex and absorbing, leaves but an insignificant corner for public affairs. Through routine and through necessity, manufacturing, display of wares, selling, purchasing, keeping accounts, trades, and professions, continue as usual. The clerk goes to his office, the workman to his shop, the artisan to his loft, the merchant to his warehouse, the professional to his cabinet, and the official to his duty;[26117] they are devoted, first of all, to their pursuits, to their daily bread, to the discharge of their obligations, to their own advancement, to their families, and to their pleasures; to provide for these things the day is not too long. Politics only briefly distract them, and then rather out of curiosity, like a play one applauds or hisses in his seat without stepping upon the stage.—"The declaration that the country is in danger," says many eye witnesses,[26118] "has made no change in the physiognomy of Paris. There are the same amusements, the same gossip.... The theaters are full as usual. The wine-shops and places of diversion overflow with the people, National Guards, and soldiers.... The fashionable world enjoys its pleasure-parties,"—"The day after the decree, the effect of the ceremony, so skillfully managed, is very slight. "The National Guard in the procession, writes a patriotic journalist,[26119] "first shows indifference and even boredom"; it is exasperated with night watches and patrol duty; they probably tell each others that in parading for the nation, one finds no time to work for one's self.—A few days after this the manifesto of the Duke of Brunswick "produces no sensation whatever. People laugh at it. Only the newspapers and their readers are familiar with it... . The mass know nothing about it. Nobody fears the coalition nor foreign troops."[26120]—On the 10th of August, outside the theater of the combat, all is quiet in Paris. People walk about and chat in the streets as usual."[26121]—On the 19th of August, Moore, the Englishman,[26122] sees, with astonishment, the heedless crowd filling the Champs Elysées, the various diversions, the air of a fête, the countless small shops in which refreshments are sold accompanied with songs and music, and the quantities of pantomimes and marionettes. "Are these people as happy as they seem to be?" he asks of a Frenchman along with him.—"They are as jolly as gods!"—"Do you think the Duke of Brunswick is ever in their heads?"—"Monsieur, you may be sure of this, that the Duke of Brunswick is the last man they think of."