their leaders, and
all to one great work. The sentiments are strong and healthy which
bind human wills in a cluster of mutual sympathy, trust, esteem and
admiration, and all these super abound, while the free companionship
which still subsists between inferior and superior,[51147] that gay
unrestrained familiarity so dear to the French, draws the knot still
closer. In this world unsullied by political defilements and ennobled by
habits of abnegation,[51148] there is all that constitutes an organized
and visible society, a hierarchy, not external and veneered, but moral
and deep-seated, with uncontested titles, recognized superiorities, an
accepted subordination, rights and duties stamped on all consciences, in
brief, what has always been wanting in revolutionary institutions, the
discipline of sentiments and emotions. Give to these men a countersign
and they do not discuss; provided it is legal, or seems so, they act
accordingly, not merely against strangers, but against Frenchmen: thus,
already on the 13th Vendemiaire they mowed down the Parisians, and on
the 18th of Fructidor they purged the Legislative Corps. Let a famous
general appear, and provided he respects formalities, they will follow
him and once more repeat the operation.--One does appear, one who for
three years has thought of nothing else, but who on this occasion
will repeat the operation only for his own advantage. He is the most
illustrious of all, and precisely the conductor or promoter of the two
previous ones, the very same who personally brought about the 13th of
Vendemiaire, and likewise, at the hands of his lieutenant, Augereau, the
18th of Fructidor.--Let him be authorized by the semblance of a decree,
let him be appointed major-general of the armed force by a minority of
one of the Councils, and the army will march behind him.--Let him issue
the usual proclamations, let him summon "his comrades" to save the
Republic and clear the hall of the Five Hundred; his grenadiers will
enter with fixed bayonets and even laugh at the sight of the deputies,
dressed as for the opera, scrambling off precipitately out of the
windows.[51149]--Let him manage the transitions, let him avoid the
ill-sounding name of dictator, let him assume a modest and yet classic
revolutionary Roman title, let him along with two others be simple
consuls; the soldiers, who have neither time nor leisure to be
publicists and who are only skin-deep republicans, will ask nothing
more. T