sound of stringed music; preceded by young girls with green boughs, and tricolor streamers:  they have shouldered, soldier-wise, their shovels and picks; and with one throat are singing ca-ira.  Yes, pardieu ca-ira, cry the passengers on the streets.  All corporate Guilds, and public and private Bodies of Citizens, from the highest to the lowest, march; the very Hawkers, one finds, have ceased bawling for one day.  The neighbouring Villages turn out:  their able men come marching, to village fiddle or tambourine and triangle, under their Mayor, or Mayor and Curate, who also walk bespaded, and in tricolor sash.  As many as one hundred and fifty thousand workers:  nay at certain seasons, as some count, two hundred and fifty thousand; for, in the afternoon especially, what mortal but, finishing his hasty day’s work, would run!  A stirring city:  from the time you reach the Place Louis Quinze, southward over the River, by all Avenues, it is one living throng.  So many workers; and no mercenary mock-workers, but real ones that lie freely to it:  each Patriot stretches himself against the stubborn glebe; hews and wheels with the whole weight that is in him.

Amiable infants, aimables enfans!  They do the ‘police des l’atelier’ too, the guidance and governance, themselves; with that ready will of theirs, with that extemporaneous adroitness.  It is a true brethren’s work; all distinctions confounded, abolished; as it was in the beginning, when Adam himself delved.  Longfrocked tonsured Monks, with short-skirted Water-carriers, with swallow-tailed well-frizzled Incroyables of a Patriot turn; dark Charcoalmen, meal-white Peruke-makers; or Peruke-wearers, for Advocate and Judge are there, and all Heads of Districts:  sober Nuns sisterlike with flaunting Nymphs of the Opera, and females in common circumstances named unfortunate:  the patriot Rag-picker, and perfumed dweller in palaces; for Patriotism like New-birth, and also like Death, levels all.  The Printers have come marching, Prudhomme’s all in Paper-caps with Revolutions de Paris printed on them; as Camille notes; wishing that in these great days there should be a Pacte des Ecrivains too, or Federation of Able Editors. (See Newspapers, &c. (in Hist.  Parl. vi. 381-406).) Beautiful to see!  The snowy linen and delicate pantaloon alternates with the soiled check-shirt and bushel-breeches; for both have cast their coats, and under both are four limbs and a set of Patriot muscles.  There do they pick and shovel; or bend forward, yoked in long strings to box-barrow or overloaded tumbril; joyous, with one mind.  Abbe Sieyes is seen pulling, wiry, vehement, if too light for draught; by the side of Beauharnais, who shall get Kings though he be none.  Abbe Maury did not pull; but the Charcoalmen brought a mummer guised like him, so he had to pull in effigy.  Let no august Senator disdain the work:  Mayor Bailly, Generalissimo Lafayette are there;—­and, alas, shall be there again another day!  The King himself comes to see:  sky-rending Vive-le-Roi; ’and suddenly with shouldered spades they form a guard of honour round him.’  Whosoever can come comes, to work, or to look, and bless the work.