CHAPTER 1.2.II.
Petition in Hieroglyphs.
With the working people, again it is not so well.

Unlucky! For there are twenty to twenty-five millions of them.

Whom, however, we lump together into a kind of dim compendious unity, monstrous but dim, far off, as the canaille; or, more humanely, as 'the masses.' Masses, indeed: and yet, singular to say, if, with an effort of imagination, thou follow them, over broad France, into their clay hovels, into their garrets and hutches, the masses consist all of units.

Every unit of whom has his own heart and sorrows; stands covered there with his own skin, and if you prick him he will bleed.

O purple Sovereignty, Holiness, Reverence; thou, for example, Cardinal Grand-Almoner, with thy plush covering of honour, who hast thy hands strengthened with dignities and moneys, and art set on thy world watch-tower solemnly, in sight of God, for such ends,--what a thought: that every unit of these masses is a miraculous Man, even as thyself art; struggling, with vision, or with blindness, for his infinite Kingdom (this life which he has got, once only, in the middle of Eternities); with a spark of the Divinity, what thou callest an immortal soul, in him! Dreary, languid do these struggle in their obscure remoteness; their hearth cheerless, their diet thin.