ness will spread to the farthest regions
of the universe and everywhere the dreaded hydra of ultramontane
superstition, chased by the combined lights of reason and virtue, no
longer finding a refuge in the hateful haunts of a dying aristocracy,
will perish at her side in despair at finally beholding on this earth
the triumph of philosophy!"]

[Footnote 26150: Barbaroux, "Memoires," 57, 59. The latter months of the
legislative assembly.]

BOOK THIRD. THE SECOND STAGE OF THE CONQUEST.

CHAPTER I.

I.--Government by gangs in times of anarchy.

Case where anarchy is recent and suddenly brought on.--The
band that succeeds the fallen government and its
administrative tools.

The worst feature of anarchy is not so much the absence of the
overthrown government as the rise of new governments of an inferior
grade. In every state which breaks up, new groups will form to conquer
and become sovereign: it was so in Gaul on the fall of the Roman empire,
also under the latest of Charlemagne's successors; the same state
of things exists now (1875) in Rumania and in Mexico. Adventurers,
gangsters, corrupted or downgraded men, social outcasts, men overwhelmed
with debts and lost to honor, vagabonds, deserters, dissolute troopers,
born enemies of work, of subordination, and of the law, unite to break
the worm-eaten barriers which still surround the sheep-like masses;
and as they are unscrupulous, they slaughter on all occasions. On this
foundation their authority rests; each in turn reigns in its own area,
and their government, in keeping with its brutal masters, consists in
robbery and murder; nothing else can be looked for from barbarians and
brigands.

But never are they so dangerous as when, in a great State recently
fallen, a sudden revolution places the central power in their hands;
for they then regard themselves as the legitimate inheritors of the
shattered government, and, under this title, they undertake to manage
the commonwealth. Now in times of anarchy the ruling power does not
proceed from above, but from below; and the chiefs, therefore, who
would remain such, are obliged to follow the blind impulsion of their
flock.[3101] Hence the important and dominant personage, the one whose
ideas prevail, the veritable successor of Richelieu and of Louis XIV.
is here the subordinate Jacobin, the pillar of the club, the maker of
motions, the street rioter, Panis Sergent, Hebert, Varlet, Henrio