So, then, clubs take the place of convents. Since the Constituent Assembly had decreed the abolition of monastic vows by its vote of February 13, 1790, many persons, rudely detached from their usual way of life and its duties, had abandoned their vocation. { 9} The nun became a working-woman; the shaved Capuchin read his journal in suburban taverns; and grinning crowds visited the profaned and open convents "as, in Grenada, travellers pass through the abandoned halls of the Alhambra, or as they pause, at Tivoli, under the columns of the Sibyl's temple."
The Jacobin Club and the Club of the Cordeliers will destroy the monarchy. In the Memoirs of Lafayette it is remarked that "it is hard to understand how the Jacobin minority and a handful of pretended Marseillais made themselves masters of Paris when nearly all the forty thousand citizens composing the National Guard desired the Constitution; but the clubs had succeeded in scattering the true patriots and in creating a dread of vigorous measures. Experience had not yet taught what this feebleness and disorganization must needs cost."
The dark side of the picture is plainly far more evident than it was in 1789. But how vivid it is still! Those who hunger after sensations are in their element. When has there been more noise, more tumult, more movement, more unexpected or more varied scenes? Listen once more to Chateaubriand who, on his return from America, passed through Paris at this epoch: "When I read the _Histoire des troubles publics ches divers peuples_ before the Revolution, I could not conceive how it was possible to live in those times. I was surprised that Montaigne wrote so cheerfully in a castle which he could not walk around without risk of being abducted by bands { 10} of Leaguers or Protestants. The Revolution has enabled me to comprehend this possibility of existence. With us men, critical moments produce an increase of life. In a society which is dissolving and forming itself anew, the strife between the two tendencies, the collision of the past and the future, the medley of ancient and modern manners, form a transitory combination which does not admit a moment of ennui. Passions and characters, freed from restraint, display themselves with an energy they do not possess in well-regulated cities. The infraction of laws, the emancipation from duties, usages, and the rules of decorum, even perils themselves, increase the interest of this disorder."