the guns, only to be stopped a few blocks beyond by an old,
white-haired man who uncovered and signaled for silence. Then the
leader of the mob said: "Citizens, it is De la Eure. Sixty years of
pure life is about to address you!" A true man's presence transformed
a mob that cannon could not conquer.

Montaigne's illustration of atmosphere was Julius Caesar. When the
great Roman was still a youth, he was captured by pirates and chained
to the oars as a galley-slave; but Caesar told stories, sang songs,
declaimed with endless good humor. Chains bound Caesar to the oars,
and his words bound the pirates to himself. That night he supped with
the captain. The second day his knowledge of currents, coasts and the
route of treasure-ships made him first mate; then he won the sailors
over, put the captain in irons, and ruled the ship like a king; soon
after, he sailed the ship as a prize into a Roman port. If this
incident is credible, a youth who in four days can talk the chains off
his wrists, talk himself into the captaincy, talk a pirate ship into
his own hands as booty, is not to be accounted for by his eloquent
words. His speech was but a tithe of his power, and wrought its spell
only when personality had first created a sympathetic atmosphere. Only
a fraction of a great man's character can manifest itself in speech;
for the character is inexpressibly finer and larger than his words.
The narrative of Washington's exploits is the smallest part of his
work. Sheer weight of personality alone can account for him. Happy
the man of moral energy all compact, whose mere presence, like that of
Samuel, the seer, restrains others, softens and transforms them. This
is a thing to be written on a man's tomb: "_His presence made bad men
good._"

This mysterious bundle of forces called man, moving through society,