Towards the end of April, everything had become aggravated. The fermentation entered the boiling state. Ever since 1830, petty partial revolts had been going on here and there, which were quickly suppressed, but ever bursting forth afresh, the sign of a vast underlying conflagration. Something terrible was in preparation.
Glimpses could be caught of the features still indistinct and imperfectly lighted, of a possible revolution. France kept an eye on Paris; Paris kept an eye on the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. The Faubourg Saint-Antoine, which was in a dull glow, was beginning its ebullition.
The wine-shops of the Rue de Charonne were, although the union of the two epithets seems singular when applied to wine-shops, grave and stormy. 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 tap-rooms, '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:— 'I don’t know the names of the leaders. We folks shall not know the day until two hours beforehand. ' One workman said: 'There are three hundred of us, let each