Town and village rang with execration and satire, with howls of rage or satisfied revenge vented by German against German.

The Roman Catholic shook his clinched fist at the Protestant, the liberal at the conservative, the protectionist at the free-trader, the partisan of absolute government at the defender of the people's rights.

Everywhere hatred and malice, everywhere a mad desire to gag, to maltreat, to tear limb from limb; this unfettering of the basest human passions giving meanwhile such an impetus to bribery, corruption, and unprincipled advancement for party purposes as to resemble the loathsome luxuriant growth of mildew in the damp corners of some neglected storeroom.
The high tide of the foreign millions had ebbed away, showing itself to have been no fructifying Nile but a destructive lava stream, leaving the country charred and desolate after its passage.

The gold that only yesterday had poured through greedy fingers, had turned to-day to ashes and withered leaves like the goblin gold of a fairy tales.

Diminished inclination for work, an insanely increased demand for the luxuries of life, the accepted ideas of morality shaken to their foundations by scandalous examples of triumphant vice and villainy--these were the blessings that remained after the so-called impetus following on the "Downfall." Work was scarcer, wages lower, but the flood of country people seeking work continued to roll toward the capital, overcoming with irresistible force the backward wave of unfortunates who could find no employment in the building yards, the factories or the workshops, trampling blindly over the bodies of the fallen, like a herd of buffaloes which marches ever straight ahead, which nothing can turn out of its course, and when it arrives at a precipice over which the leaders fall, presses onward till the last one is swallowed up in the depths.