They require six francs a day, besides their meals and as much wine as they want.

One caterer alone furnished the men at the Abbaye with 346 pints:[3191] when working incessantly day and night with a task like that of sewer-cleaners and miners, nothing else will keep their courage up .-- Food and wages must be paid for by the nation; the work is done for the nation, and, naturally, on interposing formalities, they get out of temper and betake themselves to Roland, to the City treasurer, to the section committees, to the Committee of Supervision,[3192] murmuring, threatening, and showing their bloody pikes.

That is the evidence of having done their work well.

They boast of it to Petion, impress upon him how "just and attentive" they were,[3193] their discernment, the time given to the work, so many days and so many hours; they ask only for what is "due to them"; when the treasurer, on paying them, demands their names, they give them without the slightest hesitation.

Those who escort a dismissed prisoner; masons, hairdressers, federates, require no recompense but "something to drink"; "we do not carry on this business for money," they say; "here is your friend; he promised us a glass of brandy, which we will take and then go back to our work."[3194]--Outside of their business they possess the expansive cordiality and ready sensitivity of the Parisian workman.