The scene seems to be in imitation of Berquin,[2114] with the additional complication of a mercenary consideration.
But small matters are not closely looked into, and the Assembly, under the pressure of the galleries, stoops to shows, such as are held at fairs.

Sixty vagabonds who are paid twelve francs a head, in the costumes of Spaniards, Dutchmen, Turks, Arabs, Tripolitans, Persians, Hindus, Mongols, and Chinese, conducted by the Prussian Anacharsis Clootz, enter, under the title of Ambassadors of the Human Race, to declaim against tyrants, and they are admitted to the honors of the sitting.

On this occasion the masquerade is a stroke devised to hasten and extort the abolition of nobility.[2115] At other times, there is little or no object in it; its ridiculousness is inexpressible, for the farce is played out as seriously and earnestly as in a village award of prizes.

For three days, the children who have taken their first communion before the constitutional bishop have been promenaded through the streets of Paris; at the Jacobin club they recite the nonsense they have committed to memory; and, on the fourth day, admitted to the bar of the Assembly, their spokesman, a poor little thing of twelve years, repeats the parrot-like tirade.

He winds up with the accustomed oath, upon which all the others cry out in their piping, shrill voices, "We swear!" As a climax, the President, Trejlhard, a sober lawyer, replies to the little gamins with perfect gravity in a similar strain, employing metaphors, personifications, and everything else belonging to the stock-in-trade of a pedant on his platform: "You merit a share in the glory of the founders of liberty, prepared as you are to shed your blood in her behalf." Immense applause from the "left" and the galleries, and a decree ordering the speeches of both president and children to be printed.