A crowd of citizens of all classes, of all costumes, rich, poor, soldiers, workpeople; women, to create excitement, enthusiasm, tenderness, tears whenever they enter; children, whom they raise in their arms as if to make them inspire, with their earliest breath, the feelings of an irritated people: a gloomy silence interrupted by shouts, applause, or hisses, just as the speaker is loved or hated: then inflammatory discourses shaking to the very centre by phrases of magical effect, the passions of this mob new to all the effects of eloquence.

The enthusiasm real in some, feigned in others; stirring propositions, patriotic gifts, civic crowns, busts of leading republicans paraded round, symbols of superstition, and aristocracy burnt, songs loudly vociferated by demagogues in chorus at the opening of each sitting.

What people, even in a time of tranquillity, could have resisted the pulsations of this fever, whose throbbings were daily renewed from the end of 1790 in every city in the kingdom?
It was the rule of fanaticism preceding the reign of terror.
Thus was the Jacobin Club organised.
XXI.
The club of the Cordeliers, which is sometimes confounded with that of the Jacobins, even surpassed it in turbulence and demagogism.

Marat and Danton ruled there.
The moderate constitutional party had also attempted its clubs, but passion is wanting to defensive societies; it is only the offensive that groups in factions; and thus the former expired of themselves until the establishment of the Club of Feuillants.

The people drove away with a shower of stones the first meeting of the deputies, at M.De Clermont Tonnerres.