t,
Maillard, Fournier, Lazowski, or, still lower in the scale, the
Marseilles "rough," the Faubourg gunner, the drinking market-porter
who elaborates his political conceptions in the interval between his
hiccups.[3102]--For information he has the rumors circulating in
the streets which tell of a traitor to each house, and for confirmed
knowledge the club slogans inciting him to rule over the vast machine.
A machinery so vast and complicated, a whole assembly of entangled
services ramifying in innumerable offices, with so much apparatus
of special import, so delicate as to require constant adaptation
to changing circumstances, diplomacy, finances, justice, army
administration--all this surpasses his limited comprehension; a bottle
cannot be made to contain the bulk of a hogshead.[3103] In his narrow
brain, perverted and turned topsy-turvy by the disproportionate notions
put into it, only one idea suited to his gross instincts and aptitudes
finds a place there, and that is the desire to kill his enemies; and
these are also the State's enemies, however open or concealed, present
or future, probable or even possible. He carries this savagery and
bewilderment into politics, and hence the evil arising from his
government. Simply a brigand, he would have murdered only to rob, and
his murders would have been restricted. As representing the State,
he undertakes wholesale massacres, of which he has the means ready
at hand.--For he has not yet had time enough to take apart the old
administrative implements; at all events the minor wheels, gendarmes,
jailers, employees, book-keepers, and accountants, are always in their
places and under control. There can be no resistance on the part
of those arrested; accustomed to the protection of the laws and to
peaceable ways and times, they have never relied on defending themselves
nor ever could imagine that any one could be so summarily slain. As
to the mass, rendered incapable of any effort of its own by ancient
centralization, it remains inert and passive and lets things go their
own way.--Hence, during many long, successive days, without being
hurried or impeded, with official papers quite correct and accounts in
perfect order, a massacre can be carried out with the same impunity and
as methodically as cleaning the streets or clubbing stray dogs.[3104]

II.--The development of the ideas of killings in the mass of the party.

The morning after August 10.--The tribunal of Augus