Naturally, as it is recruited by voluntary enlistment, and all
candidates have passed the purifying scrutiny of the clubs, it
comprises none but ultra-Jacobins. Naturally, the pay being forty
sous a day, it comprises none but the very lowest class. Naturally,
as the work is as loathsome as it is atrocious, it comprises but few
others[150] than those out of employment and reduced to an enlistment
to get a living, "hairdressers without customers, lackeys without
places, vagabonds, wretches unable to earn a living by honest labor,"
"thick and hard hitters" who have acquired the habit of bullying,
knocking down and keeping honest folks under their pikes, a gang of
confirmed scoundrels making public brigandage a cloak for private
brigandage, inhabitants of the slums glad to bring down their former
superiors into the mud, and themselves take precedence and strut about
in order to prove by their arrogance and self-display that they, in
their turn, are princes. - "Take a horse, the nation pays for
it!"[151] said the sans-culottes of Bordeaux to their comrades in the
street, who, "in a splendid procession," of three carriages, each
drawn by six horses, escorted by a body on horseback, behind, in
front, and each side, conducting Riouffe and two other "suspects" to
the R?ole prison.
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