[6]
In this class we see the governing rabble fully and distinctly.
Separated from its forced adherents and the official robots who serve
it as they would any other power, it stands out pure and unalloyed by
any neutral influx; we recognize here the permanent residue, the deep,
settled slime of the social sewer. It is to this sink of vice and
ignorance that the revolutionary government betakes itself for its
staff-officers and its administrative bodies.
Nowhere else could they be found. For the daily task imposed upon
them, and which must be done by them, is robbery and murder; excepting
the pure fanatics, who are few in number, only brutes and blackguards
have the aptitudes and tastes for such business. In Paris, as in the
provinces, it is from the clubs or popular associations in which they
congregate, that they are sought for. - Each section of Paris
contains one of these clubs, in all forty-eight, rallied around the
central club in the Rue St. Honor?, forty-eight district alliances of
professional rioters and brawlers, the rebels and blackguards of the
social army, all the men and women incapable of devoting themselves to
a regular life and useful labor,[7] especially those who, on the 31st
of May and 2nd of June, had aided the Paris Commune and the "Mountain"
in violating the Convention.
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