" Once a
week the theaters must be free, when Ch?ni?r'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,[31] 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 "Ev?ch?," to "fraternize
with the authorities of the Paris department;"[32] the "Fraternit?"
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.
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