The Parisian life

All the witticism of the sheets having a go at pointed remarks; there, the lazzi, the singer, the play on words, everything is used to shoot at any time against the Jacobins and the exclusives. By word of mouth, circulate the words that are the stirrup leather, and the wipe that flagellate the shoulders of the revolution is never released.

There, all the nobility of Tivoli, of Grouchy, of Corazza, all the legion of Royal-Anarchy are soldiers, and show off, with their white flag and their rallying cry "War to the téo-istes!".

The amiable folks walk for and back, gesticulating, listing about their mistress and their guillotined relatives, talking together about the day of 10 August, of their messenger who comes from Franconi, and of the key of their box at Feydeau (a well known theater) that a lady requests, relating with a guttural pronunciation the last trashed Jacobin , and Melle d'Espagne frustrated by Abolin, and the trouser of Charette sold twenty-six Louis and the history of the wine of Constance de Barras.

At any time the wiskis throw away on the boulevard new elegant muscadins coming from the "café Rigny", from the banks of the "Quatre Nations", where they drunk a milk punch, and applaud the pendule, covered by a netting, that plays le Réveil du Peuple. Their password is an allusion to Louis XVII: "How much height and a half and height and a half make?" or "What is the half of thirty four?".

They recognize themselves by pulling out the pocket of their waist coat a wooden talisman which shape at the outline represents "à la silhouette" the figures of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. They recognize themselves to a button they wear on the shoulder; They recognize themselves to the eighteen buttons of their coat. They announce their presence to each other by humming mezzo voce:

Martainville plays Concert de la rue de Feydeau or the Agrément du jour; René, Perrin et Cammaille present, at the Ambigu Theater, the Concert de la rue de Feydeau or the Folie du jour. Harshly mocked, somehow insulted in their tail coats, regular audience of Feydeau whistle their disapproval at the Ambigu; beating, crying, counter-crying: - Down the Jacobins! - Down the Muscadins! They have a set-to; and at once, the Parisians are wondering if they won't know a civil war for a milliner quarrel.

So disguised, "the chin falling into the tie, trousers falling on the calfs", the gilded youth of the Directoire show off. So strangely rigged out, they walk, square and steady on their legs, curved, making stooped, with round shoulders, the spectacles, put in fashion by the lawyers of the "tiers" (third State) in 1789, in the middle of their nose; the hand leaning strongly on a gnarled stick, their executive power, as they say, they look like "toucheurs de boeufs" (cattle drover).

By a frequent contradiction in the matter of fashion, these braggarts, with short sticks, have adopted a voice of weakling, a childish list, a gurgling parlance. They have muscles to kill an ox; they simulate such a weak throat that a sound letter would break it!- Everybody say paole supème, paoles vetes, paole panassee.