| 491 | 492 | 493 | 494 | 495 |
| 1 | 154 | 308 | 461 | 615 |
|
air of France, or soon you will only be a part of her soil."
Thus, by menaces of the sword, they would have driven back those who had
escaped from fire. But the peril left behind was deemed imminent by my
countrymen; that before them doubtful and distant; and soon other feelings
arose to obliterate fear, or to replace it by passions, that ought to have
had no place among a brotherhood of unhappy survivors of the expiring
world.
The more numerous division of emigrants, which arrived first at Paris,
assumed a superiority of rank and power; the second party asserted their
independence. A third was formed by a sectarian, a self-erected prophet,
who, while he attributed all power and rule to God, strove to get the real
command of his comrades into his own hands. This third division consisted
of fewest individuals, but their purpose was more one, their obedience to
their leader more entire, their fortitude and courage more unyielding and
active.
During the whole progress of the plague, the teachers of religion were in
possession of great power; a power of good, if rightly directed, or of
incalculable mischief, if fanaticism or intolerance guided their efforts.
In the present instance, a worse feeling than either of these actuated the
leader. He was an impostor in the most determined sense of the term. A man
who had in early life lost, through the indulgence of vicious propensities,
all sense of rectitude or self-esteem; and who, when ambition was awakened
in him, gave himself up to its influence unbridled by any scruple. His
493
Page
Quick Jump
|