The action begun carries him further than he intended to go.

Peril and resistance exasperate his anger.

He catches the fever from contact with those who are fevered, and follows robbers who have become his comrades.[1301] Add to this the clamors, the drunkenness, the spectacle of destruction, the nervous tremor of the body strained beyond its powers of endurance, and we can comprehend how, from the peasant, the laborer, and the bourgeois, pacified and tamed by an old civilization, we see all of a sudden spring forth the barbarian.

Or still worse, the primitive animal, the grinning, sanguinary, wanton baboon, who giggles while he slays, and gambols over the ruin he has accomplished.

Such is the actual government to which France is given up, and after eighteen months' experience, the best qualified, most judicious and profoundest observer of the Revolution will find nothing to compare it to but the invasion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century.[1302] "The Huns, the Heruli, the Vandals, and the Goths will come neither from the north nor from the Black Sea; they are in our very midst." II .-- The provinces Destruction of old Authorities .-- Inadequacy of new Authorities When in a building the principal beam gives way, cracks follow and multiply, and the secondary joists fall in one by one for lack of the prop, which supported them.