To a statesman imbued with the views of Drusus such a distribution of the franchise must have seemed impolitic trickery; and, like Drusus, Sulpicius resorted to questionable means in order to gain the end on which he had set his heart. He maintained Greek poets and historians, and offered prizes for singing. The most frightful circumstance about the case is not the piteous injustice suffered by the son, but the abject way in which Cicero speaks of Sulla, comparing him to Jupiter who, despite his universal beneficence, sometimes permits destruction, not on purpose but because his sway is so world-wide, and scouting the idea of its being possible for him to share personally in such wrongs. At the windows hung black flags, or the tricolour covered with black crape, and veils of the same material concealed the faces of the statues[3] on the Place de la Concorde. Such acts should at any rate have ceased after the departure of the Prussian army. Under the colonnade of the Chatelet there is a long line of electors awaiting their turn. By little and little, however, the people begin to recover themselves, the flight is stopped in the middle, and, laughing at their momentary panic, they turn back again. Or else I may be in bed at night, quietly asleep, as it is clearly my right to be, and four or five fellows, fired with patriotic ardour, may break in my door, if I do not hasten to open it on the first summons like a willing slave, and, whether I like it or not, drag me in night-cap and slippers, in my shirt perhaps, if it so pleases the brave _sans-culottes_, to the nearest outpost.