The social body is disintegrated; amongst the millions of
disconnected atoms not a nucleus of spontaneous cohesion and stable
co-ordination remains. It is impossible for civil France to
reconstruct itself; as impossible as it would be to build a Notre Dame
of Paris, or a St. Peter's of Rome out of the slime of the streets or
the dust of the highways.
With military France it is otherwise. Here, men have made trial of
each other, and are devoted to each other, subordinates to their
leaders, and all to one great work. The sentiments are strong and
healthy which bind human wills in a cluster of mutual sympathy, trust,
esteem and admiration, and all these super abound, while the free
companionship which still subsists between inferior and superior,[147]
that gay unrestrained familiarity so dear to the French, draws the
knot still closer. In this world unsullied by political defilements
and ennobled by habits of abnegation,[148] there is all that
constitutes an organized and visible society, a hierarchy, not
external and veneered, but moral and deep-seated, with uncontested
titles, recognized superiorities, an accepted subordination, rights
and duties stamped on all consciences, in brief, what has always been
wanting in revolutionary institutions, the discipline of sentiments
and emotions.
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