en terrible:
but to the actors themselves it has now become manifest that their
appointed course is one of Terror; and they say, Be it so. "Que la
Terreur soit a l'ordre du jour."

So many centuries, say only from Hugh Capet downwards, had been adding
together, century transmitting it with increase to century, the sum of
Wickedness, of Falsehood, Oppression of man by man. Kings were
sinners, and Priests were, and People. Open-Scoundrels rode triumphant,
bediademed, becoronetted, bemitred; or the still fataller species
of Secret-Scoundrels, in their fair-sounding formulas, speciosities,
respectabilities, hollow within: the race of Quacks was grown many
as the sands of the sea. Till at length such a sum of Quackery had
accumulated itself as, in brief, the Earth and the Heavens were weary
of. Slow seemed the Day of Settlement: coming on, all imperceptible,
across the bluster and fanfaronade of Courtierisms, Conquering-Heroisms,
Most-Christian Grand Monarque-isms. Well-beloved Pompadourisms: yet
behold it was always coming; behold it has come, suddenly, unlooked for
by any man! The harvest of long centuries was ripening and whitening so
rapidly of late; and now it is grown white, and is reaped rapidly, as it
were, in one day. Reaped, in this Reign of Terror; and carried home, to
Hades and the Pit!--Unhappy Sons of Adam: it is ever so; and never
do they know it, nor will they know it. With cheerfully smoothed
countenances, day after day, and generation after generation, they,
calling cheerfully to one another, "Well-speed-ye," are at work, sowing
the wind. And yet, as God lives, they shall reap the whirlwind: no other
thing, we say, is possible,--since God is a Truth and His World is a
Truth.

History, however, in dealing with this Reign of Terror, has had her own
difficulties. While the Phenomenon continued in its primary state, as
mere 'Horrors of the French Revolution,' there was abundance to be said
and shrieked. With and also without profit. Heaven knows there were
terrors and horrors enough: yet that was not all the Phenomenon; nay,
more properly, that was not the Phenomenon at all, but rather was the
shadow of it, the negative part of it. And now, in a new stage of the
business, when History, ceasing to shriek, would try rather to include
under her old Forms of speech or speculation this new amazing Thing;
that so some accredited scientific Law of Nature might suffice for
the unexpected Product of Nature, and Histor