Think of Napoleon, the leanest of all lean men, “the thinnest and oddest object I ever laid eyes on,” sitting there on his horse representing the unpopular “they”! “Madame, pray look at me: tell us which of us two is the fatter.” The paunchy fisherwoman was stunned; the crowd laughed, and fell to pieces. CHAPTER IX The young Republic found itself beset by the old governments of Europe. Because the Revolution proclaimed a new gospel, because it asserted the divine right of the people to govern themselves, because it made war upon caste and privilege, because it asserted the equal right of every citizen to take his share in the benefits as well as the burdens of society, because it threatened the tyranny of both Church and State, it was hated with intense bitterness by the kings, the high-priests, and the aristocracy of Europe. In 1793 the first great league was formed to crush it, and to restore the Old Order in France. The strong member of this combination against human progress was Great Britain. Rendered secure from attack by her ocean girdle and her invincible fleets, she nevertheless dreaded what were called “French principles.” In these principles she saw everything to dread; for they were most insidious, and few were the men of the masses who, having learned what the new doctrine was, did not embrace it. The common man, the average man, the full-grown man, the man who had not been stunted by the Orthodox pedagogue or priest, could not listen to the creed of the French republicans without feeling in his heart of hearts that it offered to the world an escape from the system which then enslaved it. Into Great Britain, in Germany, in Italy, in the Netherlands, in Russia itself, the shock with which the Old Order had fallen in France sent its vibrations--tremors which made the kings, princes, and privileged who dwelt in the upper stories of the social fabric quake with terror for the safety of the entire building.