If we choose to address each other as “Citizen,” or play any fooleries of that kind, we make no difference.  Citizen Jourdain may go out equipped in complete carmagnole, and he may refuse to doff his red cap to any dignitary breathing; but all the while Citizen Barras is wielding the real power, and Citizen Buonaparte is awaiting his turn in the background.  All the swagger of equality will avail nothing when Citizen Buonaparte gets his chance; and the very men who talked loudest about the reign of equality are the most ready to bow down and worship the strong.  Instead of ostentatiously proclaiming that one man is as good as another—­and better, we should devote ourselves to finding out who are our real superiors.  When the true man is found he will not stand upon petty forms; and no one will demand such punctilios of him.  He will treat his brethren as beings to be aided and directed, he will use his strength and his wisdom as gifts for which he must render an account, and the trivialities of etiquette will count as nothing.  When the street orator yells, “Who is our ruler?  Is he not flesh and blood like us?  Are not many of us above him?” he may possibly be stating truth.  It would have been hard to find any street-lounger more despicable than Bomba or more foolish than poor Louis XVI; but the method of oratory is purely destructive, and it will be much more to the purpose if the street firebrand gives his audience some definite ideas as to the man who ought to be chosen as leader.  If we have the faculty for recognizing our best man, all chatter about equalities and inequalities must soon drop into silence.  When the ragged Suwarrow went about among his men and talked bluffly with the raw recruits, there was no question of equality in any squad, for the tattered, begrimed man had approved himself the wisest, most audacious, and most king-like of all the host; and he could afford to despise appearances.  No soldier ventured to think of taking a liberty; every man reverenced the rough leader who could think and plan and dare.  Frederick wandered among the camp-fires at night, and sat down with one group after another of his men.  He never dreamed of equality, nor did the rude soldiers.  The king was greatest; the men were his comrades, and all were bound to serve the Fatherland—­the sovereign by offering sage guidance, the men by following to the death.  No company of men ever yet did worthy work in the world when the notion of equality was tried in practice; and no kind of effort, for evil or for good, ever came to anything so long as those who tried did not recognize the rule of the strongest or wisest.  Even the scoundrel buccaneers of the Spanish Main could not carry on their fiendish trade without sinking the notion of equality, and the simple Quakers, the Society of Friends, with all their straitened ideas, have been constantly compelled to recognize one head of their body, even though they gave him no distinctive title.  Our business is to see that every man has his due as far as possible, and not more than his due.  The superior must perceive what is the degree of deference which must be rendered to the inferior; the inferior must put away envy and covetousness, and must learn to bestow, without servility, reverence and obedience where reverence and obedience may be rightfully offered.