In the month of February, 1789, Necker avows "that obedience is not to be found anywhere, and that even the troops are not to be relied on." In the month of May, the fisherwomen, and next the greengrocers, of the town market halls come to recommend the interests of the people to the bodies of electors, and to sing rhymes in honor of the Third-Estate.

In the month of June pamphlets are in all hands; "even lackeys are poring over them at the gates of hotels." In the month of July, as the King is signing an order, a patriotic valet becomes alarmed and reads it over his shoulder .-- There is no illusion here; it is not merely the bourgeoisie which ranges itself against the legal authorities and against the established regime.
It is the entire people as well.

The craftsmen, the shopkeepers and the domestics, workmen of every kind and degree, the mob underneath the people, the vagabonds, street rovers, and beggars, the whole multitude, which, bound down by anxiety for its daily bread, had never lifted its eyes to look at the great social order of which it is the lowest stratum, and the whole weight of which it bears.
III .-- The Reveillon affair.
Suddenly the people stirs, and the superposed scaffolding totters.

It is the movement of a brute nature exasperated by want and maddened by suspicion .-- Have paid hands, which are invisible goaded it on from beneath?
Contemporaries are convinced of this, and it is probably the case.[1210] But the uproar made around the suffering brute would alone suffice to make it shy, and explain its arousal .-- On the 21st of April the Electoral Assemblies have begun in Paris; there is one in each quarter, one for the clergy, one for the nobles, and one for the Third-Estate.

Every day, for almost a month, files of electors are seen passing along the streets.