The Swarm Spirit 



ing for paving-blocks, seeking an enemy, lifting a 

 bare fist against charging horse or swinging steel, 

 like the other lunatics. I caught a man by the 

 shoulders, held him, and bade him in his own 

 language tell me what the row was about; but he 

 only stared at me wildly, his mouth open. I 

 caught another, and he struck at my face ; a third, 

 and he shrieked like a trapped beast. Only one 

 gave me a half-coherent answer, a man whom I 

 dragged from under a saber and pushed into a side- 

 street. His dear Ambrogio had been conscripted 

 by the government, he howled (I suppose they 

 had sent his son or brother with a disaffected 

 Milanese regiment on the African adventure), and 

 they were all robbers, oppressors, murderers he 

 finished by jerking loose from my grasp and 

 hurling himself, yelling, into the mob again. 



Had I been a visiting caribou, watching that 

 amazing scene and knowing nothing of its motive, 

 I might easily have concluded that some mysteri- 

 ous herd impulse was driving all these creatures to 

 they knew not what; but, being human, I knew 

 perfectly well that even this unmanageable crowd 

 had taken its cue from some leader; that the sense- 

 less emotion which inflamed them had originated 

 with individuals, who had some ground for their 

 passion; and that from the individual the excite- 

 ment spread in pestilential fashion until the whole 

 10 [133] 



