violent. Not only do both spurs which maddened it, I mean the
desire for innovation and the daily scarcity of food, continue to
prick it on. But also the political hornets which, increasing by
thousands, buzz around its ears. And the license in which it revels
for the first time, joined to the applause lavished upon it, urges
it forward more violently each day. The insurrection is glorified.
Not one of the assassins is sought out. It is against the
conspiracy of Ministers that the Assembly institutes an inquiry.
Rewards are bestowed upon the conquerors of the Bastille; it is
declared that they have saved France. All honors are awarded to the
people-to their good sense, their magnanimity, and their justice.
Adoration is paid to this new sovereign: he is publicly and
officially told, in the Assembly and by the press, that he possesses
every virtue, all rights and all powers. If he spills blood it is
inadvertently, on provocation, and always with an infallible
instinct. Moreover, says a deputy, "this blood, was it so pure?"
The greater number of people prefers the theories of their books to
the experience of their eyes; they persist in the idyll, which they
have fashioned for themselves. At the worst their dream, driven out
from the present, takes refuge in the future. To-morrow, when the
Constitution is complete, the people, made happy, will again become
wise: let us endure the storm, which leads us on to so noble a
harbor.

Meanwhile, beyond the King, inert and disarmed, beyond the Assembly,
disobeyed or submissive, appears the real monarch, the people - that
is to say, a crowd of a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand
individuals gathered together at random, on an impulse, on an alarm,
suddenly and irresistibly made legislators, judges, and
executioners. A formidable power, undefined and destructive, on