The government was there purely and simply called in question. There people publicly discussed the “question of fighting or of keeping quiet.” There were back shops where workingmen were made to swear that they would hasten into the street at the first cry of alarm, and “that they would fight without counting the number of the enemy.” This engagement once entered into, a man seated in the corner of the wine-shop “assumed a sonorous tone,” and said, “You understand! You have sworn!”

Sometimes they went upstairs, to a private room on the first floor, and there scenes that were almost masonic were enacted. They made the initiated take oaths “to render service to himself as well as to the fathers of families.” That was the formula.

In the taprooms, “subversive” pamphlets were read. “They treated the government with contempt,” says a secret report of that time.

Words like the following could be heard there:⁠—