It is even essential to shout in harmony
with them and join in their bar-room dances. The deputations of the
popular clubs come for fourteen months to the bar of the house and
recite their common-place or bombastic tirades, and the Convention is
forced to applaud them. For nine months,[17] street ballad-singers
and coffee-house ranters attend in full session and sing the rhymes of
the day, while the Convention is obliged to join in the chorus. For
six weeks,[18] the profaners of churches come to the hall and display
their dance-house buffooneries, and the Convention has not only to put
up with these, but also to take part in them. - Never, even in
imperial Rome, under Nero and Heliogabalus, did a senate descend so
low.
II.
How the parades are carried out. - Its slavery and servility - Its
participation in crime.
Observe one of their parades, that of Brumaire 20th, 22nd or 30th,
which masquerade often occurs several times a week and is always the
same, with scarcely any variation. - Male and female wretches march
in procession to the doors of the deputies' hall, still "drunk with
the wine imbibed from chalices, after eating mackerel broiled in
patens," besides refreshing themselves on the way.
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