tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">1124 In the first place, and before they are admitted into Paris, their Jacobinism is to be verified, like a bale in the customs-house, by the special agents of the executive council, and especially by Stanislas Maillard, the famous September judge, and his sixty-eight bearded ruffians, each receiving pay at five francs a day. "On all the roads, within a circuit of fifteen or twenty leagues of the capital," the delegates are searched; their trunks are opened, and their letters read. At the barriers in Paris they find "inspectors" posted by the Commune, under the pretext of protecting them against prostitutes and swindlers. There, they are taken possession of, and conducted to the mayoralty, where they receive lodging tickets, while a picket of gendarmerie escorts them to their allotted domiciles.1125—Behold them in pens like sheep, each in his numbered stall; there is no fear of the dissidents trying to escape and form a band apart: one of them, who comes to the Convention and asks for a separate hall for himself and his adherents, is snubbed in the most outrageous manner; they denounce him as an intriguer, and accuse him of a desire to defend the traitor Castries; they take his name and credentials, and threaten him with an investigation.1126 The unfortunate speaker hears the Abbaye alluded to, and evidently thinks himself fortunate to escape sleeping there that night.—After this, it is certain that he will not again demand the privilege of speaking, and that his colleagues will remain quiet; and all this is the more likely

* because the revolutionary tribunal holds permanent sessions under their eyes,

* because the guillotine is set up and in operation on the "Place de la Révolution;"

* because a recent act of the Commune enjoins on the police "the most active surveillance" and "constant patrols" by the armed force;

* because, from the first to the fourth of August, the barriers are closed;

* because, on the 2nd of August, a raid into three of the theaters puts five hundred young men in the lock-up,1127

so the discontented soon discover, if there are any, that this is not the time or the place to protest.

As to the others, already Jacobin, the faction takes it upon itself to render them still more so.—Lost in the immensity of Paris, all these provincials require moral as well as physical guides; it agrees to exercise toward them "hospitality in all its plenitude, the sweetest of Republican virtues."1128 Hence, ninety-six sans-culottes, selected from among the sections, wait on them at the Mayoralty to serve as their correspondents, and perhaps as their guarantees, and certainly as pilots

* to give them lodging-tickets,

* to escort and install them,

* to indoctrinate them, as formerly with the federates of July, 1792,

* to prevent their getting into bad company,

* to introduce them into all the exciting meetings,

* to see that their ardent patriotism quickly rises to the proper temperature of Parisian Jacobinism.1129

The theaters must not offend their eyes or ears with pieces "opposed to the spirit of the Revolution."1130 An order is issued for the performance three times a week of "republican tragedies, such as 'Brutus', 'William Tell', 'Caius Gracchus,' and other dramas suitable for the maintenance of the principles of equality and liberty." Once a week the theaters must be free, when Chéniér'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,1131 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 "Evéché," to "fraternize with the authorities of the Paris department;"1132 the "Fraternité" 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. Many of them, who, on their arrival, were "plain, quiet people,"1133 but out of their element, subjected to contagion without any antidote, quickly catch the revolutionary fever. The same as at an American revival, under the constant pressure of preaching and singing, of shouts and nervous spasms, the lukewarm and even the indifferent have not long to wait before the delirium puts them in harmony with the converted.