hem,--a certain method of leading them wherever they
thought proper. These chiefs, unable any longer to employ usefully
those old bugbears, the terms "Jacobin" and "sans-culotte," decidedly
too hackneyed, had furbished up the word "demagogue." These ringleaders,
trained to all sorts of schemes and manoeuvres, exploited successfully
the word "Mountain," and agitated to good purpose that startling and
glorious souvenir. With these few letters of the alphabet formed into
syllables and suitably accented,--Demagogues, Montagnards, Partitioners,
Communists, Red Republicans,--they made wildfires dance before the eyes
of the simple. They had found the method of perverting the brains of
their colleagues, who were so ingenuous as to swallow them whole, so to
speak, with a sort of dictionary, wherein every expression made use of
by the democratic writers and orators was readily translated. For
_humanity_ read _ferocity_; for _universal good_ read _subversion_;
for _Republic_ read _Terrorism_; for _Socialism_ read _Pillage_; for
_Fraternity_, read _Massacre_; for _the Gospel_, read _Death to the
Rich_. So that, when an orator of the Left exclaimed, for instance:
"_We rush for the suppression of war, and the abolition of the death
penalty_," a crowd of poor souls on the Right distinctly understood:
"_We wish to put everything to fire and sword_;" and in a fury shook
their fists at the orator. After such speeches, in which there had been
a question only of liberty, of universal peace, of prosperity arising
from labour, of concord, and of progress, the representatives of that
category which we have designated at the head of this paragraph, were
seen to rise, pale as death; they were not sure that they were not
already guillotined, and went to look for their hats to see whether
they still had heads.

These poor frightened creatures did not haggle over their adhesion to
the 2nd of December. The expression, "Louis Napoleon has saved
society," was invented especially for them.

And those eternal prefects, those eternal mayors, those eternal
magistrates, those eternal sheriffs, those eternal complimenters of the
rising sun, or of the lighted lamp, who, on the day after success,
flock to the conqueror, to the triumpher, to the master, to his Majesty
Napoleon the Great, to his Majesty Louis XVIII, to his Majesty
Alexander I, to his Majesty Charles X, to his Majesty Louis Philippe,
to Citizen Lamartine, to Citizen Cavaignac, to Monseigneur t