Mirabeau himself, accused by Lameth on the subject of the law of emigration, came a few days before his death to listen face to face to the invectives of his denouncer, and had not disdained to justify himself.  The clubs were the exterior strength, where the factious of the assembly gave the support of their names in order to intimidate the national representation.  The national representation had only the laws; the club had the people, sedition, and even the army.

XX.

This expression of public opinion, thus organised into a permanent association at every point in the empire, gave an electric shock which nothing could resist.  A motion made in Paris was echoed from club to club to the extremest provinces.  The same spark lighted at once the same passion in millions of souls.  All the societies corresponded with one another and with the mother society.  The impulse was communicated and the response was felt every day.  It was the government of factions enfolding in their nets the government of the law; but the law was mute and invisible, whilst faction was erect and eloquent.  Let us imagine one of these sittings, at which the citizens, already agitated by the stormy air of the period, took their places at the close of day in one of those naves recently devoted to another worship.  Some candles, brought by the affiliated, scarcely lighted up the gloomy place; naked walls, wooden benches, a tribune instead of an altar.  Around this tribune some favoured orators pressed in order to speak.  A crowd of citizens of all classes, of all costumes, rich, poor, soldiers, workpeople; women, to create excitement, enthusiasm, tenderness, tears whenever they enter; children, whom they raise in their arms as if to make them inspire, with their earliest breath, the feelings of an irritated people:  a gloomy silence interrupted by shouts, applause, or hisses, just as the speaker is loved or hated:  then inflammatory discourses shaking to the very centre by phrases of magical effect, the passions of this mob new to all the effects of eloquence.  The enthusiasm real in some, feigned in others; stirring propositions, patriotic gifts, civic crowns, busts of leading republicans paraded round, symbols of superstition, and aristocracy burnt, songs loudly vociferated by demagogues in chorus at the opening of each sitting.  What people, even in a time of tranquillity, could have resisted the pulsations of this fever, whose throbbings were daily renewed from the end of 1790 in every city in the kingdom?  It was the rule of fanaticism preceding the reign of terror.

Thus was the Jacobin Club organised.

XXI.

The club of the Cordeliers, which is sometimes confounded with that of the Jacobins, even surpassed it in turbulence and demagogism.  Marat and Danton ruled there.