Everywhere hatred and malice, everywhere a mad desire to gag, to
maltreat, to tear limb from limb; this unfettering of the basest
human passions giving meanwhile such an impetus to bribery,
corruption, and unprincipled advancement for party purposes as to
resemble the loathsome luxuriant growth of mildew in the damp
corners of some neglected storeroom.
The high tide of the foreign millions had ebbed away, showing itself
to have been no fructifying Nile but a destructive lava stream,
leaving the country charred and desolate after its passage. The gold
that only yesterday had poured through greedy fingers, had turned
to-day to ashes and withered leaves like the goblin gold of a fairy
tales. Diminished inclination for work, an insanely increased demand
for the luxuries of life, the accepted ideas of morality shaken to
their foundations by scandalous examples of triumphant vice and
villainy--these were the blessings that remained after the so-called
impetus following on the "Downfall." Work was scarcer, wages lower,
but the flood of country people seeking work continued to roll
toward the capital, overcoming with irresistible force the backward
wave of unfortunates who could find no employment in the building
yards, the factories or the workshops, trampling blindly over the
bodies of the fallen, like a herd of buffaloes which marches ever
straight ahead, which nothing can turn out of its course, and when
it arrives at a precipice over which the leaders fall, presses
onward till the last one is swallowed up in the depths.
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