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266 ORIGIN OF THE WAR OF 1853 CHAP, and the doctrines of the sect called Socialists, had XIV. ' fdled men's minds with terror. People who had known what it was to be for months and months together in actual fear for their lives and for their goods, were brought down into a condition of mind which made them willing to side with any executive government however lawless, against any kind of insurrection however righteous. Moreover, the feeling of contempt with which the President had been regarded by many was not immediately changed by the events of the 2d of December. It was effectually changed, as will be seen, by the carnage of the 4th ; but before the afternoon of that day, the very extravagance of the outrage which had been perpetrated so re- minded men of the invasion of Strasburg and the grotesque descent upon Boulogne, that, during the fifty-four hours which followed upon the dawn of the 2d, the indignation of the public was weakened by its sense of the ridiculous. The contemptuous cry of ' Soulouque ! ' indicated that Paris was comparing Louis Napoleon to the negro Emperor who had travestied the achievements of the First Bonaparte ; and there were many to whom it seemed that his mimicry of the 18th Brumaire belonged to exactly the same class of enterprises as his mimicry of the return from Elba. Plain- ly the difference was, that this time, instead of having only a few dresses and counterfeit flags, he commanded the resources of the most power- ful executive government in the world; but still there was a somewhat widespread belief that the