As a precaution, and to impose on the ill-disposed, the petitioners provide themselves with arms and line the approaches.[2532]--A popular procession is an attractive thing, and there are so many workers who do not know what to do with their empty day! And, again, it is so pleasant to appear in a patriotic opera while many, and especially women and children, want very much to see Monsieur and Madame Veto.

The people from the surrounding suburbs are invited,[2533] the homeless prowlers and beggars will certainly join the party, while the numerous body of Parisian loafers, the loungers that join every spectacle can be relied on, and the curious who, even in our time, gather by hundreds along the quays, following a dog that has chanced to tumble into the river.

All this forms a body which, without thinking, will follow its head.
At five o'clock in the morning on the 20th of June groups are already formed in the faubourgs St.Antoine and St.Marcel, consisting of National Guards, pikemen, gunners with their cannon, persons armed with sabers or clubs, and women and children .-- A notice, indeed, just posted on the walls, prohibits any assemblage, and the municipal officers appear in their scarves and command or entreat the crowd not to break the law.[2534] But, in a working-class brain, ideas are as tenacious as they are short-lived.

People count on a civic procession and get up early in the morning to attend to it; the cannon have been hitched up, the maypole tree is put on wheels and all is ready for the ceremony, everybody takes a holiday and none are disposed to return home.

Besides, they have only good intentions.