Their chiefs, skilful manipulators, had succeeded in terrifying them,--a certain method of leading them wherever they thought proper.

These chiefs, unable any longer to employ usefully those old bugbears, the terms "Jacobin" and "sans-culotte," decidedly too hackneyed, had furbished up the word "demagogue." These ringleaders, trained to all sorts of schemes and manoeuvres, exploited successfully the word "Mountain," and agitated to good purpose that startling and glorious souvenir.

With these few letters of the alphabet formed into syllables and suitably accented,--Demagogues, Montagnards, Partitioners, Communists, Red Republicans,--they made wildfires dance before the eyes of the simple.

They had found the method of perverting the brains of their colleagues, who were so ingenuous as to swallow them whole, so to speak, with a sort of dictionary, wherein every expression made use of by the democratic writers and orators was readily translated.

For _humanity_ read _ferocity_; for _universal good_ read _subversion_; for _Republic_ read _Terrorism_; for _Socialism_ read _Pillage_; for _Fraternity_, read _Massacre_; for _the Gospel_, read _Death to the Rich_.