Times Square on New Year's Eve

Chamfort (1741-1794):

Men shrink when they gather together in a crowd: they are Milton's devils, compelled to turn themselves into pygmies in order to enter into Pandemonium.

Les hommes deviennent petits en se rassemblant: ce sont les diables de Milton, obligés de se rendre pygmées, pour entrer dans le pandaemonion.

Chamfort is referring to Paradise Lost, 1.777-781:

Behold a wonder! They but now who seemed
In bigness to surpass Earth's giant sons,
Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room
Throng numberless -- like that pygmean race
Beyond the Indian mount...