[35] Here, probably,
as elsewhere, arrangements had been made for an stirring ceremonial;
there were young girls dressed in white, and learned and
impressionable magistrates were to pronounce philosophical
harangues. All at once they discover that the people gathered on
the public square are provided with clubs, scythes, and axes, and
that the National Guard will not prevent their use; on the contrary,
the Guard itself is composed almost wholly of wine growers and
others interested in the suppression of the duties on wine, of
coopers, innkeepers, workmen, carters of casks, and others of the
same stamp, all rough fellows who have their own way of interpreting
the Social Contract. The whole mass of decrees, acts, and
rhetorical flourishes which are dispatched to them from Paris, or
which emanate from the new authorities, are not worth a halfpenny
tax maintained on each bottle of wine. There are to be no more
excise duties; they will only take the civic oath on this express
condition, and that very evening they hang, in effigy, their two
deputies, who "had not supported their interests" in the National
Assembly.
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