to forget the red knots prescribed for them instead of the ribbon, the police would most likely furnish them, one gratis—of melted tar! Thus was uniformity of opinion secured, and not a person was to be found who was not a Federal, or did not imagine himself one. It frequently happened that some one coming out of his house found the end of the street swept, and in less than a half hour the whole street was swept, the impression having become general that there was a police order to that effect.
One day a grocer put out a small flag to attract customers; the example was followed from house to house, from street to street, until banners floated over the whole city; and the officials thought that some great news had come, unknown to them. And this was the people who once forced eleven thousand English to surrender in the streets, and who afterward sent five armies against the Spaniards!
The fact is, that terror is a mental disease which attacks a people like cholera, small-pox, or scarlet fever. Every one is liable to the contagion, and when the inoculation has been going on for ten years, it is doubtful if even the vaccinated escape. Do not laugh then at the sight of so much degradation. Remember that you are Spaniards, and that the Inquisition educated Spain! We bear this disease in our blood.
Let us now resume the thread of our history. Facundo entered Tucuman in triumph, where he passed several days without committing any remarkable acts of violence, and without imposing taxes; for the constitutional course of Rivadavia had given the people an amount of knowledge which could not at once be ig-
