"It was, it must be admitted, a localized monomania--a craving for rage and murder which had sprung into life under the wings of revolutionary harpies; an appetite for larceny, sharpened by confiscations; a thirst for blood, inflamed by the sight of blood. It was the frenzy of a generation nourished, like Achilles, upon the marrow of wild animals; a generation which had no model or ideal other than Schiller's brigands and the free-booters of the Middle Ages. It was the sharp irresistible desire to renew society by the means which had destroyed it--crime. It was the inevitable result of the immutable tendency of compensation in remarkable times; the Titans after Chaos; Python after the deluge; a flock of vultures after the battle; the unerring law of retaliation for those unaccountable scourges which demand death for death, corpse for corpse, which pays itself with usury, and which Holy Writ counts among the treasures of Providence. "The unexpected amalgamation of these bands, whose object was at first unknown, exhibited at first in a slight degree the inevitable confusion of ranks, conditions, and persons which is noticeable in all factions and parties which are the outgrowth of a disorganized society; but there was less in this case than had ever been seen before. That portion of the lower classes which participated in the movement did not lack the varnish of manner which is the result of expensive vices; an aristocratic populace which ran from one debauch to another, and from one excess to another, in the wake of the nobility of name and fortune, as if to prove that there is nothing more facile of emulation than a bad example. The remainder concealed beneath a most refined exterior a more odious depravity, because it had to break down the barriers of conventionality and education. Never before had so many assassins in silk stockings been seen; and it would have been a great mistake to imagine that luxurious habits existed in an inverse ratio to ferocity of character. Pitiless examples of mad fury were no less common among men of the world than among men of the people, and death was found to possess no less cruel refinements when inflicted by the dagger of the dandy than when inflicted by the knife of the butcher.