b
Drudgery staggered up to its King's Palace, and in wide expanse of
sallow faces, squalor and winged raggedness, presented hieroglyphically
its Petition of Grievances; and for answer got hanged on a 'new gallows
forty feet high,'--confesses mournfully that there is no period to be
met with, in which the general Twenty-five Millions of France suffered
less than in this period which they name Reign of Terror! But it was not
the Dumb Millions that suffered here; it was the Speaking Thousands, and
Hundreds, and Units; who shrieked and published, and made the world
ring with their wail, as they could and should: that is the
grand peculiarity. The frightfullest Births of Time are never the
loud-speaking ones, for these soon die; they are the silent ones,
which can live from century to century! Anarchy, hateful as Death, is
abhorrent to the whole nature of man; and must itself soon die.

Wherefore let all men know what of depth and of height is still
revealed in man; and, with fear and wonder, with just sympathy and just
antipathy, with clear eye and open heart, contemplate it and appropriate
it; and draw innumerable inferences from it. This inference, for
example, among the first: 'That if the gods of this lower world will sit
on their glittering thrones, indolent as Epicurus' gods, with the living
Chaos of Ignorance and Hunger weltering uncared for at their feet, and
smooth Parasites preaching, Peace, peace, when there is no peace,' then
the dark Chaos, it would seem, will rise; has risen, and O Heavens! has
it not tanned their skins into breeches for itself? That there be
no second Sansculottism in our Earth for a thousand years, let us
understand well what the first was; and let Rich and Poor of us go and
do otherwise.--But to our tale.

The Muscadin Sections greatly rejoice; Cabarus Balls gyrate: the
well-nigh insoluble problem Republic without Anarchy, have we not solved
it?--Law of Fraternity or Death is gone: chimerical Obtain-who-need has
become practical Hold-who-have. To anarchic Republic of the Poverties
there has succeeded orderly Republic of the Luxuries; which will
continue as long as it can.

On the Pont au Change, on the Place de Greve, in long sheds, Mercier, in
these summer evenings, saw working men at their repast. One's allotment
of daily bread has sunk to an ounce and a half. 'Plates containing
each three grilled herrings, sprinkled with shorn onions, wetted with
a little vinegar; to this add some mor