United States or Zambia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Henriette managed to find her way to two sansculotte troopers stationed in the centre of the Place, to whom she told her story. Reasonable fellows they seemed, offering to conduct her presently to the new authorities and get a search warrant for the Frochard clan. But the madder swirl of the Carmagnole came along, and presto! swallowed them up.
The notion was applauded, carried into effect at once. A tall sansculotte reached over betwixt the guards and placed a Crown of Thorns on the girl's brow. Another dashed a cupful of vinegar in the girl's face. "Can't you see she's helpless?" said a centurion, pointing to her pinioned arms. He yanked off the chaplet and threw it back in the crowd. They roared with merriment at the farce....
He worked like a sansculotte on a barricade. When we had torn down part of the old oak panelling, which it seemed such a pity to mutilate with axe and crowbar, we came upon a brick wall, that quickly gave way before the strength of the constable. Then we pulled out some substance like matting, and found a second brick wall, beyond which was a further shell of panelling.
On the rough trestles a number of glasses, half filled with raw potato-spirit, gave the keynote to the temper of the assembly. All those present were dressed in the black-shag spencer, the seedy black breeches, and down-at-heel boots, which had become recognised as the distinctive uniform of the sansculotte party.
"'A very pertinent question, sir, I acknowledged. 'First, I am a man; next, a down-trodden American citizen. I am cursed with neither profession, trade, nor expectations. Like Esau, I am pottageless. My residence is everywhere; the sky is my coverlet. I am one of the dispossessed, a sansculotte, a proletarian, or, in simpler phraseology addressed to your understanding, a tramp.
"You were a fool, Citizen Merlin," said Lenoir with slow significance, "not to see that the woman was playing her own game." Merlin had become livid under the grime on his face. With this ill-kempt sansculotte giant in front of him, he almost felt as if he were already arraigned before that awful, merciless tribunal, to which he had dragged so many innocent victims.
But "crime," in one instance at least, was followed by "punishment," for as the murderous citizen suddenly thrust out his roaring raucous mouth, Picard inadvertently leaned back. The huge sansculotte, to his own surprise, was eating the bushy horse-hair pigtail of Picard's bobbing queue! The ex-valet made a quick duck.
He wore a very short shirt of deer-skin, with a very deep fringe of black horsehair. Though sansculotte, his legs were painted with red and blue hands on the rhubarb ground: all over his horse were these red and blue hands and red stripes, and the beast had a red mane and tail.
Picard, the ex-valet of aristocracy, finally let out from the Salpetriere mock-court, had stumbled into this bedlam of sansculotte craziness, the rhythm and procedure of which were as foreign to him as a proposition in Euclid. But the Jolly Baker, from the Ile de Paris, was his match. Neither dancer nor vocalist, the Jolly Baker had other little entertaining ways all his own.
They used to talk about Jesus Christ, in the first French Revolution, as 'the Good Sansculotte. Perfectly true! But as the basis of that, and of all representations of Him, that will have power on the diseases of the community, we have to preach Him as the Saviour of the individual from his sin. And so, brethren, has He saved you? Do you begin your notions of Jesus Christ where His work begins?
Word Of The Day