Fournier, known as the American, a former planter, who has brought with him from St.Domingo a contempt for human life; "with his livid and sinister countenance, his mustache, his triple belt of pistols, his coarse language, his oaths, he looks like a pirate." By their side we encounter a little hump-backed lawyer named Cuirette-Verrieres, an unceasing speaker, who, on the 6th of October, 1789, paraded the city on a large white horse and afterwards pleaded for Marat, which two qualifications with his Punch figure, fully establish him in the popular imagination; the rugged guys, moreover, who hold nocturnal meetings at Santerre's needed a writer and he probably met their requirements .-- This secret society can count on other faithfuls.
"Briere, wine-dealer, Nicolas, a sapper in the 'Enfants Trouves' battalion, Gonor, claiming to be one of the victors of the Bastille,"[2527] Rossignol, an old soldier and afterwards a journeyman-jeweler, who, after presiding at the massacres of La Force, is to become an improvised general and display his incapacity, debauchery, and thievery throughout La Vendee.

"There are yet more of them," Huguenin undoubtedly, a ruined ex-lawyer, afterwards carabineer, then a deserter, next a barrier-clerk, now serving as spokesman for the Faubourg St.Honore and finally president of the September commune; there was also, doubtless, St.Huruge alias Pere Adam, the great barker of the Palais-Royal, a marquis fallen into the gutter, drinking with and dressing like a common porter, always flourishing an enormous club and followed by the riffraff.[2528]--These are all the leaders.

The Jacobins of the municipality and of the Assembly confine their support of the enterprise to conniving at it and to giving it their encouragement.[2529] It is better for the insurrection to seem spontaneous.

Through caution or shyness the Girondins, Petion, Manual and Danton himself, keep in the background----there is not reason for their coming forward .-- The rest, affiliated with the people and lost in the crowd, are better qualified to fabricate the story which their flock will like.

This tale, adapted to the crowd's intellectual limits, form and activity, is both simple and somber, such as children like, or rather a melodrama taken from an alien stage in which the good appear on one side, and the wicked on the other with an ogre or tyrant in the center, some infamous traitor who is sure to be unmasked at the end of the piece and punished according to his deserts, the whole grandiloquent terms and, as a finale, winding up with a grand chorus.