But when, after a couple of months of colossal activity, incessant correspondence, futile attempts to convert friends, quarrels with the authorities, grapplings with the internal cabals of the Union itself, he fled on his summer tour--where was the great new Party? He had hoped to have five hundred thousand men at his back, but they had come in by beggarly hundreds. There was even talk of an insurance bonus to attract them. Lassalle had exaggerated both the magnetism of his personality and the intelligence and discontent of the masses. His masterful imagination had made the outer world a mere reflection of his inner world. Even in those early days, when he was scarcely known, and that favorably rather than otherwise, he had imagined himself the pet aversion of the comfortable classes. Knowing the rôle he purposed to play, his dramatic self-consciousness had reaped in anticipation the rebel's reward. And now, though he was nearer detestation than before, there was still no Party of revolt for him to lead. But he worked on undaunted, Titanic, spending his money to subsidize tottering democratic papers, using his summer journeyings to try to attach not abilities in the countries he passed through, and his stay at the waters to draw up a great speech, with which he toured on his return. And now a new cry! The cowardly venal Press must be swept away. "As true as you are here, hanging on my lips, eager and transported, as true as my soul trembles with the purest enthusiasm in pouring itself wholly into yours, so truly does the certainty penetrate me that a day will come when we shall launch the thunderbolt which will bury that Press in eternal night." He proposed that the newspapers should therefore be deprived of their advertisement columns. What wonder if they accused him of playing Bismarck's game! And, indeed, there was not wanting direct mention of Bismarck in the speech. He at least was a man, while the Progressists were old women. The orator mocked their festive demonstrations. They were like the Roman slaves who, during the Saturnalia, played at being free. To spare themselves a real battle, the defeated were intoning among the wines and the victuals a hymn of victory. "Let us lift up our arms and pledge ourselves, if this Revolution should come about, whether in this way or in that, to remember that the Progressists and members of the National League to the last declared they wanted _no_ revolution! Pledge yourselves to do this, raise your hands on high!" At the Sonningen meeting in the great shooting-gallery, they not only raised their hands, but their knives, against interrupting Progressists. The Burgomaster, a Progressist, at the head of ten gendarmes armed with bayonets, and policemen with drawn swords, dissolved the meeting. Lassalle, half followed, half borne onward by six thousand cheering men, strode to the telegraph office, and sent off a telegram to Bismarck. His working-men's meeting had been dissolved by a