The Ancient Regime

The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1

by Hippolyte A. Taine




PREFACE.

BOOK FIRST.   The Structure of the Ancient Society.

CHAPTER I.  The Origin of Privileges.

CHAPTER II.  The Privileged Classes.

CHAPTER III.  Local Services Due by the Privileged Classes.

CHAPTER IV.  Public services due by the privileged classes.


BOOK SECOND.   Habits and Characters.

CHAPTER I.  Social Habits.

CHAPTER II.  Drawing room Life .

CHAPTER III.  Disadvantages of this Drawing room Life.


BOOK THIRD.   The Spirit and the Doctrine.

CHAPTER I.  Scientific Acquisition.

CHAPTER II.  The Classic Spirit, the Second Element.

CHAPTER III.  Combination of the two elements.

CHAPTER IV.  Organizing the Future Society.


BOOK FOURTH.  The Propagation of the Doctrine.

CHAPTER I.  Success in France.

CHAPTER II.  The French Public.

CHAPTER III.  The Middle Class.


BOOK FIFTH.  The People

CHAPTER I.  Hardships.

CHAPTER II.  Taxation the principal cause of misery.

CHAPTER III.  Intellectual state of the people.

CHAPTER IV.  The Armed Forces.

CHAPTER V.  Summary.





INTRODUCTION

Why should we fetch Taine's work up from its dusty box in the
basement of the national library? First of all because his realistic
views of our human nature, of our civilization and of socialism as
well as his dark premonitions of the 20th century were proven correct.
Secondly because we may today with more accuracy call his work:

"The Origins of Popular Democracy and of Communism."

His lucid analysis of the current ideology remains as interesting
or perhaps even more interesting than when it was written especially
because we cannot accuse him of being part in our current political
and ideological struggle.

Even though I found him wise, even though he confirmed my own
impressions from a rich and varied life, even though I considered that
our children and the people at large should benefit from his insights
into the innermost recesses of the political Man, I still felt it
would be best to find out why his work had been put on the index by
the French and largely forgotten by the Anglo-Saxon world.  So I
consulted a contemporary French authority, Jean-François Revel who
mentions Taine works in his book, "La Connaissance Inutile." (Paris
1988).  Revel notes that a socialist historian, Alphonse Aulard
methodically and dishonestly attacked "Les Origines..", and that
Aulard was specially recruited by the University of Sorbonne for this
purpose.  Aulard pretended that Taine was a poor historian by finding a
number of errors in Taine's work.  This was done, says Revel, because
the 'Left' came to see Taine's work as "a vile counter-revolutionary
weapon." The French historian Augustin Cochin proved, however, that
Aulard and not Taine had made the errors but by that time Taine had
been defamed and his works removed from the shelves of the French
universities.

Now Taine was not a professional historian.  Perhaps this was as
well since most professional historians, even when conscientious and
accurate, rarely are in a position to be independent.  They generally
work for a university, for a national public or for the ministry of
education and their books, once approved, may gain a considerable
income once millions of pupils are compelled to acquire these.

Taine initially became famous, not as a professional historian but
as a literary critic and journalist.  His fame allowed him to sell his
books and articles and make a comfortable living without cow-towing to
any government or university.  He wrote as he saw fit, truthfully, even
though it might displease a number of powerful persons.

Taine did not pretend to be a regular historian, but rather someone
enquiring into the history of Public Authorities and their supporters.
Through his comments he appears not only as a decent person but also
as a psychologist and seer.  He describes mankind, as I know it from my
life in institutions, at sea and abroad in a large international
organization.  He describes mankind as it was, as it was seen by Darwin
in 'THE EXPRESSIONS OF EMOTIONS IN MAN AND ANIMALS.  Taine described
the human being as he was and is and had the courage to tell the
French about themselves, their ancient rulers, and the men of the
Revolution, even if it went against the favorable opinion so many of
his countrymen had of this terrible period.  His understanding of our
evolution, of mankind and of the evolution of society did not find
favor with men who believed that they in the socialist ideology had
found the solution to all social ills.  Only recently has science begun
to return to Darwin in order to rediscover the human being as Taine
knew him.  You can find Taine's views of humanity confirmed in Robert
Wright's book 'THE MORAL ANIMAL.' (Why we are the way we are.)

Taine had full access to the files of the French National archives
and these and other original documents.  Taine had received a French
classical education and, being foremost among many brilliant men, had
a capacity for study and work which we no longer demand from our
young.  He accepted Man and society, as they appeared to him, he
described his findings without compassion for the hang-ups of his
prejudiced countrymen.  He described Man as a gregarious animal living
for a brief spell in a remote corner of space, whose different
cultures and nations had evolved haphazardly in time, carried along by
forces and events exceeding our comprehension, blindly following their
innate drives.  These drives were followed with cunning but rarely with
far-sighted wisdom.  Taine, the prophet, has more than ever something
to tell us.  He warned his countrymen against themselves, their
humanity, and hence against their fears, anxieties, greed, ambitions,
conceit and excessive imagination.  His remarks and judgments exhort us
to be responsible, modest and kind and to select wise and modest
leaders.  He warns us against young hungry men's natural desire to mass
behind a tribune and follow him onwards, they hope, along the high
road to excitement, fame, power and riches.  He warns us against our
readiness to believe in myth and metaphysics, demonstrating how Man
will believe anything, even the most mystical or incomprehensible
religion or ideology, provided it is preached by his leaders.  History,
as seen by Taine, is one long series of such adventures and horrors
and nowhere was this more evident than in France before, during and
after the Revolution in 1789.

Taine became, upon reading 'On the Origins of the Species' a
convinced Darwinian and was, the year after Darwin, honored by the
University of Oxford with the title of doctor honoris causa in jure
civili for his 'History of English Literature'.  Taine was not a
methodical ideologist creating a system.  He did not defend any
particular creed or current.  He was considered some kind of positivist
but he did not consider himself as belonging to any particular school.

The 6 volumes of "Les Origines de la France Contemporaine" appeared
one after the other in Paris between 1875 and 1893.  They were
translated into English and published in New York soon afterwards.
They were also translated into German.  Taine's direct views displeased
many in France, as the Royalists, the bonapartist and the Socialists
felt hurt.  Still, the first edition of Volume II of "LE RÉGIME
MODERNE" published by Hachette in 1894 indicated that "L'ANCIEN
REGIME" at that time had been printed in 18 editions, "LA RÉVOLUTION"
volume I in 17 editions, volume II in 16 editions and volume III in 13
editions.  "LE RÉGIME MODERNE" volume I had been printed in only 8
editions.  Photographic reprints appeared in the US in 1932 and 1962.

Taine's description and analysis of events in France between 1750
and 1870 are, as you will see colorful, lucid, and sometimes intense.
His style might today appear dated since he writes in rather long
sentences, using parables to drive his points firmly home.  His books
were widely read in academic circles and therefore influenced a great
many political students in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Lenin, who came to Paris around 1906, might well have profited by
Taine's analysis.  Hitler is also likely to have profited by his
insights.  Lenin was like so many other socialists of his day a great
admirer of Robespierre and his party and would undoubtedly have tried
to find out how Robespierre got into power and why he lost his hold on
France the way he did.  Part of Taine's art was to place himself into
the place of the different people and parties who took part in the
great events.  When pretends to speak for the Jacobins, it so
convincingly done, that it is hard to know whether he speaks on
'their' behalf or whether he is, in fact, quoting one of them.

Taine, like the Napoleon he described, believed that in order to
understand people you are aided if you try to imagine yourself in
their place.  This procedure, as well as his painstaking research, make
his descriptions of the violent events of the past ring true.

Taine knew and described the evil inherent in human nature and in
the crowd.  His warnings and explanations did not prevent Europe from
repeating the mistakes of the past.  The 20th century saw a replay of
the French Revolution repeated in all its horror when Lenin, Mao,
Hoxa, and Pol Pot followed the its script and when Stalin and Hitler
made good use of Napoleon's example.

Taine irritated the elite of the 3rd French republic as well as
everyone who believed in the popular democracy based on one person one
vote.  You can understand when you read the following preface which was
actually placed in front of "The Revolution" volume II.  Since it
clarifies Taine's aims and justifications, I have moved and placed it
below.

Not long before his death Taine, sensing that his wisdom and deep
insights into human nature and events, no longer interested the élite,
remarked to a friend that "the scientific truth about the human animal
is perhaps unacceptable except for a very few".[1] Now, 100 years
later, after a century of ideological wars between ambitious men, I am
afraid that the situation remains unchanged.  Mankind remains reluctant
to face the realities of our uncontrolled existence! A few men begin,
however, to share my misgivings about the future of a system which has
completely given up the respect for wisdom and experience preferring a
system of elaborate human rights and new morals.  There is reason to
recall Macchiavelli's words:

"In times of difficulty men of merit are sought after, but in easy
times it is not men of merit,  but such as have riches and powerful
relations, that are most in favor."

And let me to quote the Greek historian Polybius' observations[2]
about the cyclic evolution of the Greek city states:

".  .  .  What then are the beginnings I speak of and what is the
first origin of political societies? When owing to floods, famines,
failure of crops or other such causes there occurs such a destruction
of the human race as tradition tells us has more than once happened,
and as we must believe will often happen again, all arts and crafts
perishing at the same time, when in the course of time, when springing
from the survivors as from seeds men have again increased in numbers
and just like other animals form herds  -  it being a matter of course
that they too should herd together with those of their kind owing to
their natural weakness  -  it is a necessary consequence that the man
who excels in bodily strength and in courage will lead and rule over
the rest.  We observe and should regard as a most genuine work of
nature this very phenomenon in the case of the other animals which act
purely by instinct and among who the strongest are always indisputable
the masters  -  I speak of bulls, boars, cocks, and the like.  It is
probable then that at the beginning men lived thus, herding together
like animals and following the lead of the strongest and bravest, the
ruler's strength being here the sole limit to his power and the name
we should give his rule being monarchy.

But when in time feelings of sociability and companionship begin to
grow in such gatherings of men, then kingship has truck root; and the
notions of goodness, justice, and their opposites begin to arise in
men.

6.  The manner in which these notions come into being is as follows.
Men being all naturally inclined to sexual intercourse, and the
consequence this being the birth of children, whenever one of those
who have been reared does not on growing up show gratitude to those
who reared him or defend them, but on the contrary takes to speaking
ill of them or ill-treating them, it is evident that he will displease
and offend those who have been familiar with his parents and have
witnessed the care and pains they spent on attending to and feeding
their children.  For seeing that men are distinguished from the other
animals possessing the faculty of reason, it is obviously improbable
that such a difference of conduct should escape them, as it escapes
the other animals: they will notice the thing and be displeased at
what is going on, looking to the future and reflecting that they may
all meet with the same treatment.  Again when a man who has been helped
or succored when in danger by another does not show gratitude to his
preserver, but even goes to the length of attempting to do him injury,
it is clear that those who become aware of it will naturally be
displeased and offended by such conduct, sharing the resentment of
their injured neighbor and imagining themselves in the same situation.
From all this there arises in everyone a notion of the meaning and
theory of duty, which is the beginning and end of justice.  Similarly,
again, when any man is foremost in defending his fellows from danger,
and braves and awaits the onslaught of the most powerful beasts, it is
natural that he should receive marks of favor and honor from the
people, while the man who acts in the opposite manner will meet with
reprobation and dislike.  From this again some idea of what is base and
what is noble and of what constitutes the difference is likely to
arise among the people; and noble conduct will be admired and imitated
because advantageous, while base conduct will be avoided.  Now when the
leading and most powerful man among people always throws the weight of
his authority the side of the notions on such matters which generally
prevail, and when in the opinion of his subjects he apportions rewards
and penalties according to desert, they yield obedience to him no
longer because they fear his force, but rather because their judgment
approves him; and they join in maintaining his rule even if he is
quite enfeebled by age, defending him with one consent and battling
against those who conspire to overthrow his rule.  Thus by insensible
degrees the monarch becomes a king, ferocity and force having yielded
the supremacy to reason.



7.  Thus is formed naturally among men the first notion of goodness
and justice, and their opposites; this is the beginning and birth of
true kingship.  For the people maintain the supreme power not only in
the hands of these men themselves, but in those of their descendants,
from the conviction that those born from and reared by such men will
also have principles like to theirs.  And if they ever are displeased
with the descendants, they now choose their kings and rulers no longer
for their bodily strength and brute courage, but for the excellency of
their judgment and reasoning powers, as they have gained experience
from actual facts of the difference between the one class of qualities
and the other.  In old times, then, those who had once been chosen to
the royal office continued to hold it until they grew old, fortifying
and enclosing fine strongholds with walls and acquiring lands, in the
one case for the sake of the security of their subjects and in the
other to provide them with abundance of the necessities of life.  And
while pursuing these aims, they were exempt from all vituperation or
jealousy, as neither in their dress nor in their food and drink did
they make any great distinction, but lived very much like everyone
else, not keeping apart from the people.  But when they received the
office by hereditary succession and found their safety now provided
for, and more than sufficient provision of food, they gave way to
their appetites owing to this superabundance, and came to think that
the rulers must be distinguished from their subjects by a peculiar
dress, that there should be a peculiar luxury and variety in the
dressing and serving of their viands, and that they should meet with
no denial in the pursuit of their amours, however lawless.  These
habits having given rise in the one case to envy and offence and in
the other to an outburst of hatred and passionate resentment, the
kingship changed into a tyranny; the first steps towards its overthrow
were taken by the subjects, and conspiracies began to be formed.  These
conspiracies were not the work of the worst men, but of the noblest,
most high-spirited, and most courageous, because such men are least
able to brook the insolence of princes.

8.  The people now having got leaders, would combine with them
against the ruling powers for the reasons I stated above; king-ship
and monarchy would be utterly abolished, and in their place
aristocracy would begin to grow.  For the commons, as if bound to pay
at once their debt of gratitude to the abolishers of monarchy, would
make them their leaders and entrust their destinies to them.  At first
these chiefs gladly assumed this charge and regarded nothing as of
greater importance than the common interest, administering the private
and public affairs of the people with paternal solicitude.  But here
again when children inherited this position of authority from their
fathers, having no experience of misfortune and none at all of civil
equality and liberty of speech, and having been brought up from the
cradle amid the evidences of the power and high position of their
fathers, they abandoned themselves some to greed of gain and
unscrupulous money-making, others to indulgence in wine and the
convivial excess which accompanies it, and others again to the
violation of women and the rape of boys; and thus converting the
aristocracy info an oligarchy aroused in the people feelings similar
to those of which I just spoke, and in consequence met with the same
disastrous end as the tyrant.

9.  For whenever anyone who has noticed the jealousy and hatred with
which they are regarded by the citizens, has the courage to speak or
act against the chiefs of the state he has the whole mass of the
people ready to back him.  Next, when they have either killed or
banished the oligarchs, they no longer venture to set a king over
them, as they still remember with terror the injustice they suffered
from the former ones, nor can they entrust the government with
confidence to a select few, with the evidence before them of their
recent error in doing so.  Thus the only hope still surviving
unimpaired is in themselves, and to this they resort, making the state
a democracy instead of an oligarchy and assuming the responsibility
for the conduct of affairs.  Then as long as some of those survive who
experienced the evils of oligarchical dominion, they are well pleased
with the present form of government, and set a high value on equality
and freedom of speech.  But when a new generation arises and the
democracy falls into the hands of the grandchildren of its founders,
they have become so accustomed to freedom and equality that they no
longer value them, and begin to aim at pre-eminence; and it is chiefly
those of ample fortune who fall into this error.  So when they begin to
lust for power and cannot attain it through themselves or their own
good qualities, they ruin their estates, tempting and corrupting the
people in every possible way.  And hence when by their foolish thirst
for reputation they have created among the masses an appetite for
gifts and the habit of receiving them, democracy in its turn is
abolished and changes into a rule of force and violence.  For the
people, having grown accustomed feed at the expense of others and to
depend for their livelihood on the property of others, as soon as they
find a leader who is enterprising but is excluded from the honors of
office by his poverty, institute the rule of violence; and now uniting
their forces massacre, banish, and plunder, until they degenerate
again into perfect savages and find once more a master and monarch.

Such is the cycle of political revolution, the course pointed by
nature in which constitutions change, disappear, and finally return to
the point from which they started.  Anyone who clearly perceives this
may indeed in speaking of the future of any state be wrong in his
estimate of the time the process will take, but if his judgment is not
tainted by animosity or jealousy, he will very seldom be mistaken to
the stage of growth or decline it has reached, and as to the form into
which it will change.  And especially in the case of the Roman state
will this method enable us to arrive at a knowledge of its formation,
growth, and greatest perfection, and likewise of the change for the
worse which is sure follow some day.  For, as I said, this state, more
than any other, has been formed and has grown naturally, and will
undergo a natural decline and change to its contrary.  The reader will
be able to judge of the truth of this from the subsequent parts this
work."

The modern reader may think that all this is irrelevant to him,
that the natural sciences will solve all his problems.  He would be
wise to recall that the great Roman republic in which Polybius lived
more than [22]00 years ago, did indeed become transformed into tyranny
and, in the end, into anarchy and oblivion.  No wonder that the makers
of the American constitution keenly studied Polybius.  Not only has
Taine's comments and factual description of the cyclic French
political history much to teach us about ourselves and the dangers
which lie ahead, but it also shows us the origins and weakness of our
political theories.  It is obvious that should ask ourselves the
question of where, in the political evolution we are now? Are we still
ruled by the corrupt oligarchs or have we reached the stage where the
people has become used to be fed on the property of others? If so
dissolution and anarchy is just around the corner.

"The Revolution, Vol.  II, 8th ed.

Svend Rom.  Hendaye, France.  February 2000.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
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Preface:

In this volume, as in those preceding it and in those to come,
there will be found only the history of Public Authorities.  Others
will write that of diplomacy, of war, of the finances, of the Church;
my subject is a limited one.  To my great regret, however, this new
part fills an entire volume; and the last part, on the revolutionary
government, will be as long.

I have again to regret the dissatisfaction I foresee this work will
cause to many of my countrymen.  My excuse is, that almost all of them,
more fortunate than myself, have political principles which serve them
in forming their judgments of the past.  I had none; if indeed, I had
any motive in undertaking this work, it was to seek for political
principles.  Thus far I have attained to scarcely more than one; and
this is so simple that will seem puerile, and that I hardly dare
express it.  Nevertheless I have adhered to it, and in what the reader
is about to peruse my judgments are all derived from that; its truth
is the measure of theirs.  It consists wholly in this observation: that


HUMAN SOCIETY, ESPECIALLY A MODERN SOCIETY, IS A VAST AND
COMPLICATED THING.


Hence the difficulty in knowing and comprehending it.  For the same
reason it is not easy to handle the subject well.  It follows that a
cultivated mind is much better able to do this than an uncultivated
mind, and a man specially qualified than one who is not.  From these
two last truths flow many other consequences, which, if the reader
deigns to reflect on them, he will have no trouble in defining.

Paris 1881.



Notes:


[1] Page XLVI of the Introduction to the Edition by Robert Lafont
in 1986 by "Les Origines de la France Contemporaine".

[2] From "HISTORIES", BOOK VI.  3.  3-4.  1  FROM LOEB'S CLASSICAL
LIBRARY, HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS.


THE ANCIENT REGIME

PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR:

ON POLITICAL IGNORANCE AND WISDOM.

In 1849, being twenty-one years of age, and an elector, I was very
much puzzled, for I had to nominate fifteen or twenty deputies, and,
moreover, according to French custom, I had not only to determine what
candidate I would vote for, but what theory I should adopt.  I had to
choose between a royalist or a republican, a democrat or a
conservative, a socialist or a bonapartist; as I was neither one nor
the other, nor even anything, I often envied those around me who were
so fortunate as to have arrived at definite conclusions.  After
listening to various doctrines, I acknowledged that there undoubtedly
was something wrong with my head.  The motives that influenced others
did not influence me; I could not comprehend how, in political
matters, a man could be governed by preferences.  My assertive
countrymen planned a constitution just like a house, according to the
latest, simplest, and most attractive plan; and there were several
under consideration - the mansion of a marquis, the house of a common
citizen, the tenement of a laborer, the barracks of a soldier, the
kibbutz of a socialist, and even the camp of savages.  Each claimed
that his was "the true habitation for Man, the only one in which a
sensible person could live." In my opinion, the argument was weak;
personal taste could not be valid for everyone.  It seemed to me that a
house should not be built for the architect alone, or for itself, but
for the owner who was to live in it.  Referring to the owner for his
advice, that is submitting to the French people the plans of its
future habitation, would evidently be either for show or just to
deceive them; since the question, obviously, was put in such a manner
that it provided the answer in advance.  Besides, had the people been
allowed to reply in all liberty, their response was in any case not of
much value since France was scarcely more competent than I was; the
combined ignorance of ten millions is not the equivalent of one man's
wisdom.  A people may be consulted and, in an extreme case, may declare
what form of government it would like best, but not that which it most
needs.  Nothing but experience can determine this; it must have time to
ascertain whether the political structure is convenient, substantial,
able to withstand inclemency, and adapted to customs, habits,
occupations, characters, peculiarities and caprices.  For example, the
one we have tried has never satisfied us; we have during eighty years
demolished it thirteen times, each time setting it up anew, and always
in vain, for never have we found one that suited us.  If other nations
have been more fortunate, or if various political structures abroad
have proved stable and enduring, it is because these have been erected
in a special way.  Founded on some primitive, massive pile, supported
by an old central edifice, often restored but always preserved,
gradually enlarged, and, after numerous trials and additions, they
have been adapted to the wants of its occupants.  It is well to admit,
perhaps, that there is no other way of erecting a permanent building.
Never has one been put up instantaneously, after an entirely new
design, and according to the measurements of pure Reason.  A sudden
contrivance of a new, suitable, and enduring constitution is an
enterprise beyond the forces of the human mind.

In any event, I came to the conclusion that if we should ever
discover the one we need it would not be through some fashionable
theory.  The point is, if it exists, to discover it, and not to put it
to a vote.  To do that would not only be pretentious it would be
useless; history and nature will do it for us; it is for us to adapt
ourselves to them, as it is certain they will accommodate themselves
to us.  The social and political mold, into which a nation may enter
and remain, is not subject to its will, but determined by its
character and its past.  It is essential that, even in its least
traits, it should be shaped on the living material to which it is
applied; otherwise it will burst and fall to pieces.  Hence, if we
should succeed in finding ours, it will only be through a study of
ourselves, while the more we understand exactly what we are, the more
certainly shall we distinguish what best suits us.  We ought,
therefore, to reverse the ordinary methods, and form some conception
of the nation before formulating its constitution.  Doubtless the first
operation is much more tedious and difficult than the second.  How much
time, how much study, how many observations rectified one by the
other, how many researches in the past and the present, over all the
domains of thought and of action, what manifold and age-long labors
before we can obtain an accurate and complete idea of a great people.
A people which has lived a people's age, and which still lives! But it
is the only way to avoid the unsound construction based on a
meaningless planning.  I promised myself that, for my own part, if I
should some day undertake to form a political opinion, it would be
only after having studied France.

What is contemporary France? To answer this question we must know
how this France is formed, or, what is still better, to act as
spectator at its formation.  At the end of the last century (in 1789),
like a molting insect, it underwent a metamorphosis.  Its ancient
organization is dissolved; it tears away its most precious tissues and
falls into convulsions, which seem mortal.  Then, after multiplied
throes and a painful lethargy, it re-establishes itself.  But its
organization is no longer the same: by silent interior travail a new
being is substituted for the old.  In 1808, its leading characteristics
are decreed and defined: departments, arondissements, cantons and
communes, no change have since taken place in its exterior divisions
and functions.  Concordat, Code, Tribunals, University, Institute,
Prefects, Council of State, Taxes, Collectors, Cours des Comptes, a
uniform and centralized administration, its principal organs, are
still the same.  Nobility, commoners, artisans, peasants, each class
has henceforth the position, the sentiments, the traditions which we
see at the present day (1875).  Thus the new creature is at once stable
and complete; consequently its structure, its instincts and its
faculties mark in advance the circle within which its thought and its
action will be stimulated.  Around it, other nations, some more
advanced, others less developed, all with greater caution, some with
better results, attempt similarly a transformation from a feudal to a
modern state; the process takes place everywhere and all but
simultaneously.  But, under this new system as beneath the ancient, the
weak is always the prey of the strong.  Woe to those (nations) whose
retarded evolution exposes them to the neighbor suddenly emancipated
from his chrysalis state, and is the first to go forth fully armed!
Woe likewise to him whose too violent and too abrupt evolution has
badly balanced his internal economy.  Who, through the exaggeration of
his governing forces, through the deterioration of his deep-seated
organs, through the gradual impoverishment of his vital tissues is
condemned to commit inconsiderate acts, to debility, to impotency,
amidst sounder and better-balanced neighbors! In the organization,
which France effected for herself at the beginning of the (19th)
century, all the general lines of her contemporary history were
traced.  Her political revolutions, social Utopias, division of
classes, role of the church, conduct of the nobility, of the middle
class, and of the people, the development, the direction, or deviation
of philosophy, of letters and of the arts.  That is why, should we wish
to understand our present condition our attention always reverts to
the terrible and fruitful crisis by which the ancient regime produced
the Revolution, and the Revolution the new regime.

Ancient régime, Revolution, new régime, I am going to try to
describe these three conditions with exactitude.  I have no other
object in view.  A historian may be allowed the privilege of a
naturalist; I have regarded my subject the same as the metamorphosis
of an insect.  Moreover, the event is so interesting in itself that it
is worth the trouble of being observed for its own sake, and no effort
is required to suppress one's ulterior motives.  Freed from all
prejudice, curiosity becomes scientific and may be completely
concentrated on the secret forces, which guide the wonderful process.
These forces are the situation, the passions, the ideas, the wills of
each group of actors, and which can be defined and almost measured.
They are in full view; we are not reduced to conjectures about them,
to uncertain divination, to vague indications.  By singular good
fortune we perceive the men themselves, their exterior and their
interior.  The Frenchmen of the ancient régime are still within visual
range.  All of us, in our youth, (around 1840-50), have encountered one
or more of the survivors of this vanished society.  Many of their
dwellings, with the furniture, still remain intact.  Their pictures and
engravings enable us to take part in their domestic life, see how they
dress, observe their attitudes and follow their movements.  Through
their literature, philosophy, scientific pursuits, gazettes, and
correspondence, we can reproduce their feeling and thought, and even
enjoy their familiar conversation.  The multitude of memoirs, issuing
during the past thirty years from public and private archives, lead us
from one drawing room to another, as if we bore with us so many
letters of introduction.  The independent descriptions by foreign
travelers, in their journals and correspondence, correct and complete
the portraits, which this society has traced of itself.  Everything
that it could state has been stated, except,

* what was commonplace and well-known to contemporaries,

* whatever seemed technical, tedious and vulgar,

* whatever related to the provinces, to the bourgeoisie, the
peasant, to the laboring man, to the government, and to the household.

It has been my aim to fill this void, and make France known to
others outside the small circle of the literary and the cultivated.
Owing to the kindness of M. Maury[1] and the precious indications of
M. Boutaric, I have been able to examine a mass of manuscript
documents.  These include the correspondence of a large number of
intendants, (the Royal governor of a large district), the directors of
customs and tax offices, legal officers, and private persons of every
kind and of every degree during the thirty last years of the ancient
regime.  Also included are the reports and registers of the various
departments of the royal household, the reports and registers of the
States General in 176 volumes, the dispatches of military officers in
1789 and 1790, letters, memoirs and detailed statistics preserved in
the one hundred boxes of the ecclesiastical committee, the
correspondence, in 94 bundles, of the department and municipal
authorities with the ministries from 1790 to 1799, the reports of the
Councilors of State on mission at the end of 1801, the reports of
prefects under the Consulate, the Empire, and the Restoration down to
1823.  There is such a quantity of unknown and instructive documents
besides these that the history of the Revolution seems, indeed, to be
still unwritten.  In any event, it is only such documents, which can
make all these people come alive.  The lesser nobles, the curates, the
monks, the nuns of the provinces, the aldermen and bourgeoisie of the
towns, the attorneys and syndics of the country villages, the laborers
and artisans, the officers and the soldiers.  These alone enable us to
contemplate and appreciate in detail the various conditions of their
existence, the interior of a parsonage, of a convent, of a town-
council, the wages of a workman, the produce of a farm, the taxes
levied on a peasant, the duties of a tax-collector, the expenditure of
a noble or prelate, the budget, retinue and ceremonial of a court.
Thanks to such resources, we are able to give precise figures, to know
hour by hour the occupations of a day and, better still, read off the
bill of fare of a grand dinner, and recompose all parts of a full-
dress costume.  We have even, on the one hand, samples of the materials
of the dresses worn by Marie Antoinette, pinned on paper and
classified by dates.  And on the other hand, we can tell what clothes
were worn by the peasant, describe the bread he ate, specify the flour
it was made of, and state the cost of a pound of it in sous and
deniers.[2] With such resources one becomes almost contemporary with
the men whose history one writes and, more than once, in the Archives,
I have, while tracing their old handwriting on the time-stained paper
before me, been tempted to speak aloud with them.

H.  A.  Taine, August 1875.



Notes:

[1].  Taine's friend who was the director of the French National
Archives.  (SR.)

[2].  One sou equals 1/20th of a franc or 5 centimes.  12 diniers
equaled one sou.  (SR.)



BOOK FIRST.  THE STRUCTURE OF THE ANCIENT SOCIETY.

CHAPTER I.  THE ORIGIN OF PRIVILEGES.

In 1789 three classes of persons, the Clergy, the Nobles and the
King, occupied the most prominent position in the State with all the
advantages pertaining thereto namely, authority, property, honors, or,
at the very least, privileges, immunities, favors, pensions,
preferences, and the like.  If they occupied this position for so long
a time, it is because for so long a time they had deserved it.  They
had, in short, through an immense and secular effort, constructed by
degrees the three principal foundations of modern society.

I.  Services and Recompenses of the Clergy.

Of these three layered foundations the most ancient and deepest was
the work of the clergy.  For twelve hundred years and more they had
labored upon it, both as architects and workmen, at first alone and
then almost alone.  - In the beginning, during the first four
centuries, they constituted religion and the church.  Let us ponder
over these two words; in order to weigh them well.  One the one hand,
in a society founded on conquest, hard and cold like a machine of
brass, forced by its very structure to destroy among its subjects all
courage to act and all desire to live, they had proclaimed the "glad
tidings," held forth the "kingdom of God," preached loving resignation
in the hands of a Heavenly Father, inspired patience, gentleness,
humility, self-abnegation, and charity, and opened the only issues by
which Man stifling in the Roman 'ergastulum' could again breathe and
see daylight: and here we have religion.  On the other hand, in a State
gradually undergoing depopulation, crumbling away, and fatally
becoming a prey, they had formed a living society governed by laws and
discipline, rallying around a common aim and a common doctrine,
sustained by the devotion of chiefs and by the obedience of believes,
alone capable of subsisting beneath the flood of barbarians which the
empire in ruin suffered to pour in through its breaches: and here we
have the church.  - It continues to build on these two first
foundations, and after the invasion, for over five hundred years, it
saves what it can still save of human culture.  It marches in the van
of the barbarians or converts them directly after their entrance,
which is a wonderful advantage.  Let us judge of it by a single fact:
In Great Britain, which like Gaul had become Latin, but whereof the
conquerors remain pagan during a century and a half, arts, industries,
society, language, all were destroyed; nothing remained of an entire
people, either massacred or fugitive, but slaves.  We have still to
divine their traces; reduced to the condition of beasts of burden,
they disappear from history.  Such might have been the fate of Europe
if the clergy had not promptly tamed the fierce brutes to which it
belonged.

Before the bishop in his gilded cope or before the monk, the
converted German "emaciated, clad in skins," wan, "dirtier and more
spotted than a chameleon,"[1] stood fear-stricken as before a
sorcerer.  In his calm moments, after the chase or inebriety, the vague
divination of a mysterious and grandiose future, the dim conception of
an unknown tribunal, the rudiment of conscience which he already had
in his forests beyond the Rhine, arouses in him through sudden alarms
half-formed, menacing visions.  At the moment of violating a sanctuary
he asks himself whether he may not fall on its threshold with vertigo
and a broken neck.[2]   Convicted through his own perplexity, he stops
and spares the farm, the village, and the town, which live under the
priest's protection.  If the animal impulse of rage, or of primitive
lusts, leads him to murder or to rob, later, after satiety, in times
of sickness or of misfortune, taking the advice of his concubine or of
his wife, he repents and makes restitution twofold, tenfold, a
hundredfold, unstinted in his gifts and immunities.[3] Thus, over the
whole territory the clergy maintain and enlarge their asylums for the
oppressed and the vanquished.  -  On the other hand, among the warrior
chiefs with long hair, by the side of kings clad in furs, the mitered
bishop and abbot, with shaven brows, take seats in the assemblies;
they alone know how to use the pen and how to discuss.  Secretaries,
councilors, theologians, they participate in all edicts; they have
their hand in the government; they strive through its agency to bring
a little order out of immense disorder; to render the law more
rational and more humane, to re-establish or preserve piety,
instruction, justice, property, and especially marriage.  To their
ascendancy is certainly due the police system, such as it was,
intermittent and incomplete, which prevented Europe from falling into
a Mongolian anarchy.  If, down to the end of the twelfth century, the
clergy bears heavily on the princes, it is especially to repress in
them and beneath them the brutal appetites, the rebellions of flesh
and blood, the outbursts and relapses of irresistible ferocity which
are undermining the social fabric.  -  Meanwhile, in its churches and
in its convents, it preserves the ancient acquisitions of humanity,
the Latin tongue, Christian literature and theology, a portion of
pagan literature and science, architecture, sculpture, painting, the
arts and industries which aid worship.  It also preserved the more
valuable industries, which provide man with bread, clothing, and
shelter, and especially the greatest of all human acquisitions, and
the most opposed to the vagabond humor of the idle and plundering
barbarian, the habit and taste for labor.  In the districts depopulated
through Roman exactions, through the revolt of the Bagaudes, through
the invasion of the Germans, and the raids of brigands, the
Benedictine monk built his cabin of boughs amid briers and
brambles.[4]  Large areas around him, formerly cultivated, are nothing
but abandoned thickets.  Along with his associates he clears the ground
and erects buildings; he domesticates half-tamed animals, he
establishes a farm, a mill, a forge, an oven, and shops for shoes and
clothing.  According to the rules of his order, he reads daily for two
hours.  He gives seven hours to manual labor, and he neither eats nor
drinks more than is absolutely essential.  Through his intelligent,
voluntary labor, conscientiously performed and with a view to the
future, he produces more than the layman does.  Through his temperate,
judicious, economical system he consumes less than the layman does.
Hence it is that where the layman had failed he sustains himself and
even prospers.[5]   He welcomes the unfortunate, feeds them, sets them
to work, and unites them in matrimony and beggars, vagabonds, and
fugitive peasants gather around the sanctuary.  Their camp gradually
becomes a village and next a small town; man plows as soon as he can
be sure of his crops, and becomes the father of a family as soon as he
considers himself able to provide for his offspring.  In this way new
centers of agriculture and industry are formed, which likewise become
new centers of population.[6]

To food for the body add food for the soul, not less essential.
For, along with nourishment, it was still necessary to furnish Man
with inducements to live, or, at the very least, with the resignation
that makes life endurable, and also with the poetic daydreams taking
the place of massing happiness.[7]  Down to the middle of the
thirteenth century the clergy stands almost alone in furnishing this.
Through its innumerable legends of saints, through its cathedrals and
their construction, through its statues and their expression, through
its services and their still transparent meaning, it rendered visible
"the kingdom of God." It finally sets up an ideal world at the end of
the present one, like a magnificent golden pavilion at the end of a
miry morass.[8]  The saddened heart, athirst for tenderness and
serenity, takes refuge in this divine and gentle world.  Persecutors
there, about to strike, are arrested by an invisible hand; wild beasts
become docile; the stags of the forest come of their own accord every
morning to draw the chariots of the saints; the country blooms for
them like a new Paradise; they die only when it pleases them.
Meanwhile they comfort mankind; goodness, piety, forgiveness flows
from their lips with ineffable sweetness; with eyes upturned to
heaven, they see God, and without effort, as in a dream, they ascend
into the light and seat themselves at His right hand.  How divine the
legend, how inestimable in value, when, under the universal reign of
brute force, to endure this life it was necessary to imagine another,
and to render the second as visible to the spiritual eye as the first
was to the physical eye.  The clergy thus nourished men for more than
twelve centuries, and in the grandeur of its recompense we can
estimate the depth of their gratitude.  Its popes, for two hundred
years, were the dictators of Europe.  It organized crusades, dethroned
monarchs, and distributed kingdoms.  Its bishops and abbots became
here, sovereign princes, and there, veritable founders of dynasties.
It held in its grasp a third of the territory, one-half of the
revenue, and two-thirds of the capital of Europe.  Let us not believe
that Man counterfeits gratitude, or that he gives without a valid
motive; he is too selfish and too envious for that.  Whatever may be
the institution, ecclesiastic or secular, whatever may be the clergy,
Buddhist or Christian, the contemporaries who observe it for forty
generations are not bad judges.  They surrender to it their will and
their possessions, just in proportion to its services, and the excess
of their devotion may measure the immensity of its benefaction.

II.  Services and Recompenses of the Nobles.

Up to this point no aid is found against the power of the sword and
the battle-ax except in persuasion and in patience.  Those States
which, imitating the old empire, attempted to rise up into compact
organizations, and to interpose a barrier against constant invasion,
obtained no hold on the shifting soil; after Charlemagne everything
melts away.  There are no more soldiers after the battle of Fontanet;
during half a century bands of four or five hundred outlaws sweep over
the country, killing, burning, and devastating with impunity.  But, by
way of compensation, the dissolution of the State raises up at this
very time a military generation.  Each petty chieftain has planted his
feet firmly on the domain he occupies, or which he withholds; he no
longer keeps it in trust, or for use, but as property, and an
inheritance.  It is his own manor, his own village, his own earldom; it
no longer belongs to the king; he contends for it in his own right.
The benefactor, the conservator at this time is the man capable of
fighting, of defending others, and such really is the character of the
newly established class.  The noble, in the language of the day, is the
man of war, the soldier (miles), and it is he who lays the second
foundation of modern society.

In the tenth century his extraction is of little consequence.  He is
oftentimes a Carlovingian count, a beneficiary of the king, the sturdy
proprietor of one of the last of the Frank estates.  In one place he is
a martial bishop or a valiant abbot in another a converted pagan, a
retired bandit, a prosperous adventurer, a rude huntsman, who long
supported himself by the chase and on wild fruits.[9]  The ancestors
of Robert the Strong are unknown, and later the story runs that the
Capets are descended from a Parisian butcher.  In any event the noble
of that epoch is the brave, the powerful man, expert in the use of
arms, who, at the head of a troop, instead of flying or paying ransom,
offers his breast, stands firm, and protects a patch of the soil with
his sword.  To perform this service he has no need of ancestors; all
that he requires is courage, for he is himself an ancestor; security
for the present, which he insures, is too acceptable to permit any
quibbling about his title.-Finally, after so many centuries, we find
each district possessing its armed men, a settled body of troops
capable of resisting nomadic invasion; the community is no longer a
prey to strangers.  At the end of a century this Europe, which had been
sacked by the Vikings, is to throw 200,000 armed men into Asia.
Henceforth, both north and south, in the face of Moslems and of
pagans, instead of being conquered it is to conquer.  For the second
time an ideal figure becomes apparent after that of the saint,[10]
the hero; and the newborn sentiment, as effective as the old one, thus
groups men together into a stable society.  -This consists of a
resident corps of men-at-arms, in which, from father to son, one is
always a soldier.  Each individual is born into it with his hereditary
rank, his local post, his pay in landed property, with the certainty
of never being abandoned by his chieftain, and with the obligation of
giving his life for his chieftain in time of need.  In this epoch of
perpetual warfare only one set-up is valid, that of a body of men
confronting the enemy, and such is the feudal system; we can judge by
this trait alone of the perils which it wards off, and of the service
which it enjoins.  "In those days," says the Spanish general chronicle,
"kings, counts, nobles, and knights, in order to be ready at all
hours, kept their horses in the rooms in which they slept with their
wives." The viscount in his tower defending the entrance to a valley
or the passage of a ford, the marquis thrown as a forlorn hope on the
burning frontier, sleeps with his hand on his weapon, like an American
lieutenant among the Sioux behind a western stockade.  His dwelling is
simply a camp and a refuge.  Straw and heaps of leaves cover the
pavement of the great hall, here he rests with his troopers, taking
off a spur if he has a chance to sleep.  The loopholes in the wall
scarcely allow daylight to enter; the main thing is not to be shot
with arrows.  Every taste, every sentiment is subordinated to military
service; there are certain places on the European frontier where a
child of fourteen is required to march, and where the widow up to
sixty is required to remarry.  Men to fill up the ranks, men to mount
guard, is the call, which at this moment issues from all institutions
like the summons of a brazen horn.  - Thanks to these braves, the
peasant(villanus) enjoys protection.  He is no longer to be
slaughtered, no longer to be led captive with his family, in herds,
with his neck in the yoke.  He ventures to plow and to sow, and to
reply upon his crops; in case of danger he knows that he can find an
asylum for himself, and for his grain and cattle, in the circle of
palisades at the base of the fortress.  By degrees necessity
establishes a tacit contract between the military chieftain of the
donjon and the early settlers of the open country, and this becomes a
recognized custom.  They work for him, cultivate his ground, do his
carting, pay him quittances, so much for house, so much per head for
cattle, so much to inherit or to sell; he is compelled to support his
troop.  But when these rights are discharged he errs if, through pride
or greed, he takes more than his due.  - As to the vagabonds, the
wretched, who, in the universal disorder and devastation, seek refuge
under his guardianship, their condition is harder.  The soil belongs to
the lord because without him it would be uninhabitable.  If he assigns
them a plot of ground, if he permits them merely to encamp on it, if
he sets them to work or furnishes them with seeds it is on conditions,
which he prescribes.  They are to become his serfs, subject to the laws
on mainmorte.[11]  Wherever they may go he is to have the right of
fetching them back.  From father to son they are his born domestics,
applicable to any pursuit he pleases, taxable and workable at his
discretion.  They are not allowed to transmit anything to a child
unless the latter, "living from their pot," can, after their death,
continue their service.  "Not to be killed," says Stendhal, "and to
have a good sheepskin coat in winter, was, for many people in the
tenth century, the height of felicity"; let us add, for a woman, that
of not being violated by a whole band.  When we clearly represent to
ourselves the condition of humanity in those days, we can comprehend
how men readily accepted the most obnoxious of feudal rights, even
that of the droit du seigneur.  The risks to which they were daily
exposed were even worse.[12]  The proof of it is that the people
flocked to the feudal structure as soon as it was completed.  In
Normandy, for instance, when Rollo had divided off the lands with a
line, and hung the robbers, the inhabitants of the neighboring
provinces rushed in to establish themselves.  The slightest security
sufficed to repopulate a country.

People accordingly lived, or rather began to live once more, under
the rude, iron-gloved hand which used them roughly, but which afforded
them protection.  The seignior, sovereign and proprietor, maintains for
himself under this double title, the moors, the river, the forest, all
the game.  It is no great evil, since the country is nearly a desert,
and he devotes his leisure to exterminating large wild beasts.  He
alone possessed the resources.  He is the only one that is able to
construct the mill, the oven, and the winepress; to establish the
ferry, the bridge, or the highway, to dike in a marsh, and to raise or
purchase a bull.  To indemnify himself he taxes for these, for forces
their use.  If he is intelligent and a good manager of men, if he seeks
to derive the greatest profit from his ground, he gradually relaxes,
or allows to become relaxed, the meshes of the net in which his
peasants and serfs work unprofitably because they are too tightly
drawn.  Habits, necessity, a voluntary or forced conformity, have their
effect.  Lords, peasants, serfs, and bourgeois, in the end adapted to
their condition, bound together by a common interest, form together a
society, a veritable corporation.  The seigniory, the county, the duchy
becomes a patrimony which is loved through a blind instinct, and to
which all are devoted.  It is confounded with the seignior and his
family; in this relation people are proud of him.  They narrate his
feats of arms; they cheer him as his cavalcade passes along the
street; they rejoice in his magnificence through sympathy.[13]  If he
becomes a widower and has no children, they send deputations to him to
entreat him to remarry, in order that at his death the country may not
fall into a war of succession or be given up to the encroachment of
neighbors.  Thus there is a revival, after a thousand years, of the
most powerful and the most vivacious of the sentiments that support
human society.  This one is the more precious because it is capable of
expanding.  In order that the small feudal patrimony to become the
great national patrimony, it now suffices for the seigniories to be
combined in the hands of a single lord, and that the king, chief of
the nobles, should overlay the work of the nobles with the third
foundation of France.

III.  Services and Recompenses of the King.

  Kings built the whole of this foundation, one stone after
another.  Hugues Capet laid the first one.  Before him royalty conferred
on the King no right to a province, not even Laon; it is he who added
his domain to the title.  During eight hundred years, through conquest,
craft, inheritance, the work of acquisition goes on; even under Louis
XV France is augmented by the acquisition of Lorraine and Corsica.
Starting from nothing, the King is the maker of a compact State,
containing the population of twenty-six millions, and then the most
powerful in -Europe.  -  Throughout this interval he is at the head of
the national defense.  He is the liberator of the country against
foreigners, against the Pope in the fourteenth century, against the
English in the fifteenth, against the Spaniards in the sixteenth.  In
the interior, from the twelfth century onward, with the helmet on his
brow, and always on the road, he is the great justiciary, demolishing
the towers of the feudal brigands, repressing the excesses of the
powerful, and protecting the oppressed.[14]   He puts an end to
private warfare; he establishes order and tranquility.  This was an
immense accomplishment, which, from Louis le Gros to St.  Louis, from
Philippe le Bel to Charles VII, continues uninterruptedly up to the
middle of the eighteenth century in the edict against duels and in the
"Grand Jours."[15]   Meanwhile all useful projects carried out under
his orders, or developed under his patronage, roads, harbors, canals,
asylums, universities, academies, institutions of piety, of refuge, of
education, of science, of industry, and of commerce, bears his imprint
and proclaim the public benefactor.-Services of this character
challenge a proportionate recompense; it is allowed that from father
to son he is wedded to France; that she acts only through him; that he
acts only for her; while every souvenir of the past and every present
interest combine to sanction this union.  The Church consecrates it at
Rheims by a sort of eighth sacrament, accompanied with legends and
miracles; he is the anointed of God.[16]   The nobles, through an old
instinct of military fealty, consider themselves his bodyguard, and
down to August 10, 1789, rush forward to die for him on his staircase;
he is their general by birth.  The people, down to 1789, regard him as
the redresser of abuses, the guardian of the right, the protector of
the weak, the great almoner and the universal refuge.  At the beginning
of the reign of Louis XVI "shouts of Vive le roi, which began at six
o'clock in the morning, continued scarcely interrupted until after
sunset."[17]   When the Dauphin was born the joy of France was that of
a whole family.  "People stopped each other in the streets, spoke
together without any acquaintance, and everybody embraced everybody he
knew."[18]  Every one, through vague tradition, through immemorial
respect, feels that France is a ship constructed by his hands and the
hands of his ancestors.  In this sense, the vessel is his property; it
is his right to it is the same as that of each passenger to his
private goods.  The king's only duty consists in being expert and
vigilant in guiding across the oceans and beneath his banner the
magnificent ship upon which everyone's welfare depends.-Under the
ascendancy of such an idea he was allowed to do everything.  By fair
means or foul, he so reduced ancient authorities as to make them a
fragment, a pretense, a souvenir.  The nobles are simply his officials
or his courtiers.  Since the Concordat he nominates the dignitaries of
the Church.  The States-General were not convoked for a hundred and
seventy-five years; the provincial assemblies, which continue to
subsist, do nothing but apportion the taxes; the parliaments are
exiled when they risk a remonstrance.  Through his council, his
intendants, his sub-delegates, he intervenes in the most trifling of
local matters.  His revenue is four hundred and seventy-seven
millions.[19]   He disburses one-half of that of the Clergy.  In short,
he is absolute master, and he so declares himself.[20]  -Possessions,
freedom from taxation, the satisfactions of vanity, a few remnants of
local jurisdiction and authority, are consequently all that is left to
his ancient rivals; in exchange for these they enjoy his favors and
marks of preference.-Such, in brief, is the history of the privileged
classes, the Clergy, the Nobles, and the King.  It must be kept in mind
to comprehend their situation at the moment of their fall; having
created France, they enjoy it.  Let us see clearly what becomes of them
at the end of the eighteenth century; what portion of their advantages
they preserved; what services they still render, and what services
they do not render.



Notes :

[1].  "Les Moines d'Occident," by Montalembert, I.  277.  St.  Lupicin
before the Burgundian King Chilperic, II.  416.  Saint Karileff before
King Childebert.  Cf.  passim, Gregory of Tours and the Bollandist
collection.

[2].  No legend is more frequently encountered; we find it as late
as the twelfth century.

[3].  Chilperic, for example, acting under the advice of Fredegonde
after the death of all their children.

[4].  Montalembert, ibid., II.  book 8; and especially "Les Forêts de
la France dans l'antiquité et au Moyen Age," by Alfred Maury.  Spinoe
et vepres is a phrase constantly recurring in the lives of the saints.

[5].  We find the same thing to day with the colonies of Trappists
in Algiers.

[6].  "Polyptique d'Irminon," by Guérard.  In this work we see the
prosperity of the domain belonging to the Abbey of St.  Germain des
Près at the end of the eighth century.  According to M. Guérard's
statistics, the peasantry of Paliseau were about as prosperous in the
time of Charlemagne as at the present day.

[7].  Taine's definition would also fit contemporary (1999) drugs
and video entertainment which also provide mankind with both hope,
pleasure and entertainment.  (SR.)

[8].  There are twenty-five thousand lives of the saints, between
the sixth and the tenth centuries, collected by the Bollandists.  - The
last that are truly inspired are those of St.  Francis of Assisi and
his companions at the beginning of the fourteenth century.  The same
vivid sentiment extends down to the end of the fifteenth century in
the works of Fra Angelico and Hans Memling.  - The Sainte Chapelle in
Paris, the upper church at Assisi, Dante's Paradise, and the Fioretti,
furnish an idea of these visions.  As regards modern literature, the
state of a believer's soul in the middle ages is perfectly described
in the "Pélerinage à Kevlaar," by Henri Heine, and in "Les Reliques
vivantes," by Tourgueneff.

[9].  As, for example, Tertulle, founder of the Platagenet family,
Rollo, Duke of Normandy, Hugues, Abbot of St.  Martin of Tours and of
St.  Denis.

[10].  See the "Cantilenes" of the tenth century in which the
"Chansons de Geste" are foreshadowed.

[11].  Laws governing the feudal system (1372) where the feudal lord
is unable to transmit his property by testament but has to leave them
to the next holder of the title.  The "mainmortables" were serfs who
belonged to the property.  (SR.)

[12].  See in the "Voyages du Caillaud," in Nubia and Abyssinia, the
raids for slaves made by the Pacha's armies; Europe presented about
the same spectacle between the years 800 and 900.

[13].  See the zeal of subjects for their lords in the historians of
the middle ages; Gaston Phoebus, Comte de Foix, and Guy, Comte de
Flandres in Froissart; Raymond de Béziers and Raymond de Toulouse, in
the chronicle of Toulouse.  This profound sentiment of small local
patrimonics is apparent at each provincial assembly in Normandy,
Brittany, Franche-Comté, etc.

[14].  Suger, Life of Louis VI.

[15].  "Les Grand Jours d'Auvergne," by Fléchier, ed.  Chéruel.  The
last feudal brigand, the Baron of Plumartin, in Poitou, was taken,
tried, and beheaded under Louis XV in 1756.

[16].  As late as Louis XV a procès verbal is made of a number of
cures of the King's evil.

[17].  "Mémoires of Madame Campan," I.  89; II.  215.

[18].  In 1785 an Englishman visiting France boasts of the political
liberty enjoyed in his country.  As an offset to this the French
reproach the English for having decapitated Charles I., and "glory in
having always maintained an inviolable attachment to their own king; a
fidelity, a respect which no excess or severity on his part has ever
shaken." ("A Comparative View of the French and of the English
Nation," by John Andrews, p.257.)

[19].  Memoirs of D'Augeard, private secretary of the Queen, and a
former farmer-general.

[20].  The following is the reply of Louis XV.  to the Parliament of
Paris, March 3, 1766, in a lit de justice : "The sovereign authority
is vested in my person.  .  .  The legislative power, without dependence
and without division, exists in myself alone.  Public security emanates
wholly from myself; I am its supreme custodian.  My people are one only
with me; national rights and interests, of which an attempt is made to
form a body separate from those of the monarch, are necessarily
combined with my own, and rests only in my hands."





CHAPTER II.  THE PRIVILEGED CLASSES.

I.   Number of the Privileged Classes.

The privileged classes number about 270,000 persons, comprising of
the nobility, 140,000 and of the clergy 130,000.[1] This makes from
25,000 to 30,000 noble families; 23,000 monks in 2,500 monasteries,
and 37,000 nuns in 1,500 convents, and 60,000 curates and vicars in as
many churches and chapels.  Should the reader desire a more distinct
impression of them, he may imagine on each square league of
territory[2], and to each thousand of inhabitants, one noble family in
its weathercock mansion.  In each village there is a curate and his
church, and, every six or seven leagues, a community of men or of
women.  We have here the ancient chieftains and founders of France;
thus entitled, they still enjoy many possessions and many rights.

II.  Their Possessions, Capital, and Revenue.

Let us always keep in mind what they were, in order to comprehend
what they are.  Great as their advantages may be, these are merely the
remains of still greater advantages.  This or that bishop or abbot,
this or that count or duke, whose successors make their bows at
Versailles, was formerly the equals of the Carlovingians and the first
Capets.  A Sire de Montlhéry held King Philippe I in check.[3] The
abbey of St.  Germain des Prés possessed 430,000 hectares of land
(about 900,000 acres), almost the extent of an entire department.  We
need not be surprised that they remained powerful, and, especially,
rich; no stability is greater than that of an.  associative body.  After
eight hundred years, in spite of so many strokes of the royal ax, and
the immense change in the culture of society, the old feudal root
lasts and still vegetates.  We remark it first in the distribution of
property.[4] A fifth of the soil belongs to the crown and the
communes, a fifth to the Third-Estate, a fifth to the rural
population, a fifth to the nobles and a fifth to the clergy.
Accordingly, if we deduct the public lands, the privileged classes own
one-half of the kingdom.  This large portion, moreover, is at the same
time the richest, for it comprises almost all the large and imposing
buildings, the palaces, castles, convents, and cathedrals, and almost
all the valuable movable property, such as furniture, plate, objects
of art, the accumulated masterpieces of centuries.-- We can judge of
it by an estimate of the portion belonging to the clergy.  Its
possessions, capitalized, amount to nearly 4,000,000,000 francs.[5]
Income from this amounts to 80 or 100 millions.  To this must be added
the dime (or tithes), 123 millions per annum, in all 200 millions, a
sum which must be doubled to show its equivalent at the present day.
We must also add the chance contributions and the usual church
collections.[6] To fully realize the breadth of this golden stream let
us look at some of its affluents.  399 monks at Prémontré estimate
their revenue at more than 1,000,000 livres, and their capital at
45,000,000.  The Provincial of the Dominicans of Toulouse admits, for
his two hundred and thirty-six monks, "more than 200,000 livres net
revenue, not including the convent and its enclosure; also, in the
colonies, real estate, Negroes and other effects, valued at several
millions." The Benedictines of Cluny, numbering 298, enjoy an income
of 1,800,000 livres.  Those of Saint-Maur, numbering 1672, estimate the
movable property of their churches and houses at 24,000,000, and their
net revenue at 8 millions, "without including that which accrues to
Messieurs the abbots and priors commendatory," which means as much and
perhaps more.  Dom Rocourt, abbot of Clairvaux, has from 300,000 to
400,000 livres income; the Cardinal de Rohan, archbishop of
Strasbourg, more than 1,000,000.[7] In Franche-Comté, Alsace and
Roussillon the clergy own one-half of the territory, in Hainaut and
Artois, three-quarters, in Cambrésis fourteen hundred plow-areas out
of seventeen hundred.[8] Almost the whole of Le Velay belongs to the
Bishop of Puy, the abbot of La Chaise-Dieu, the noble chapter of
Brionde, and to the seigniors of Polignac.  The canons of St.  Claude,
in the Jura, are the proprietors of 12,000 serfs or 'mainmorts.'[9]  -
Through fortunes of the first class we can imagine those of the
second.  As along with the noble it comprises the ennobled.  As the
magistrates for two centuries, and the financiers for one century had
acquired or purchased nobility, it is clear that here are to be found
almost all the great fortunes of France, old or new, transmitted by
inheritance, obtained through court favors, or acquired in business.
When a class reaches the summit it is recruited out of those who are
mounting or clambering up.  Here, too, there is colossal wealth.  It has
been calculated that the possessions of the princes of the royal
family, the Comtés of Artois and of Provence, the Ducs d'Orléans and
de Penthiévre then covered one-seventh of the territory.[10] The
princes of the blood have together a revenue of from 24 to 25
millions; the Duc d'Orléans alone has a rental of 11,500,000.[11] --
These are the vestiges of the feudal régime.  Similar vestiges are
found in England, in Austria, in Germany and in Russia.
Proprietorship, indeed, survives a long time survives the
circumstances on which it is founded.  Sovereignty had constituted
property; divorced from sovereignty it has remained in the hands
formerly sovereign.  In the bishop, the abbot and the count, the king
respected the proprietor while overthrowing the rival, and, in the
existing proprietor a hundred traits still indicate the annihilated or
modified sovereign.

III.  Their Immunities.

Such is the total or partial exemption from taxation.  The tax-
collectors halt in their presence because the king well knows that
feudal property has the same origin as his own; if royalty is one
privilege seigniory is another; the king himself is simply the most
privileged among the privileged.  The most absolute, the most
infatuated with his rights, Louis XIV, entertained scruples when
extreme necessity compelled him to enforce on everybody the tax of the
tenth.[12] Treaties, precedents, immemorial custom, reminiscences of
ancient rights again restrain the fiscal hand.  The clearer the
resemblance of the proprietor to the ancient  independent sovereign
the greater his immunity.  - In some places a recent treaty guarantees
him by his position as a stranger, by his almost royal extraction.  "In
Alsace foreign princes in possession, with the Teutonic order and the
order of Malta, enjoy exemption from all real and personal
contributions." "In Lorraine the chapter of Remiremont has the
privilege of assessing itself in all state impositions."[13] Elsewhere
he is protected by the maintenance of the provincial Assemblies, and
through the incorporation of the nobility with the soil: in Languedoc
and in Brittany the commoners alone paid the taille[14] -Everywhere
else his quality preserved him from it, him, his chateau and the
chateau's dependencies; the taille reaches him only through his
farmers.  And better still, it is sufficient that he himself should
work, or his steward, to communicate to the land his original
independence.  As soon as he touches the soil, either personally or
through his agent, he exempts four plowing-areas (quatre charrues),
three hundred arpents,[15] which in other hands would pay 2,000 francs
tax.  Besides this he is excempt on "the woods, the meadows, the vines,
the ponds and the enclosed land belonging to the chateau, of whatever
extent it may be." Consequently, in Limousin and elsewhere, in regions
principally devoted to pasturage or to vineyards, he takes care to
manage himself, or to have managed, a certain portion of his domain;
in this way he exempts it from the tax collector.[16] There is yet
more.  In Alsace, through an express covenant he does not pay a cent of
tax.  Thus, after the assaults of four hundred and fifty years,
taxation, the first of fiscal instrumentalities, the most burdensome
of all, leaves feudal property almost intact.[17] -- For the last
century, two new tools, the capitation-tax and the vingtièmes, appear
more effective, and yet are but little more so.  - First of all,
through a masterstroke of ecclesiastical diplomacy, the clergy diverts
or weakens the blow.  As it is an organization, holding assemblies, it
is able to negotiate with the king and buy itself off.  To avoid being
taxed by others it taxes itself.  It makes it appear that its payments
are not compulsory contributions, but a "free gift." It obtains then
in exchange a mass of concessions, is able to diminish this gift,
sometimes not to make it, in any event to reduce it to sixteen
millions every five years, that is to say to a little more than three
millions per annum.  In 1788 it is only 1,800,000 livres, and in 1789
it is refused altogether.[18] And still better: as it borrows to
provide for this tax, and as the décimes which it raises on its
property do not suffice to reduce the capital and meet the interest on
its debt, it has the adroitness to secure, besides, a grant from the
king.  Out of the royal treasury, each year, it receives 2,500,000
livres, so that, instead of paying, it receives.  In 1787 it receives
in this way 1,500,000 livres.-As for the nobles, they, being unable to
combine together, to have representatives, and to act in a public way,
operate instead in a private way.  They contact ministers, intendants,
sub-delegates, farmer-generals, and all others clothed with authority,
their quality securing attentions, consideration and favors.  In the
first place, this quality exempts themselves, their dependents, and
the dependents of their dependents, from drafting in the militia, from
lodging soldiers, from (la corvée) laboring on the highways.  Next, the
capitation being fixed according to the tax system, they pay little,
because their taxation is of little account.  Moreover, each one brings
all his credit to bear against assessments.  "Your sympathetic heart,"
writes one of them to the intendant, "will never allow a father of my
condition to be taxed for the vingtiémes rigidly like a father of low
birth."[19] On the other hand, as the taxpayer pays the capitation-tax
at his actual residence, often far away from his estates, and no one
having any knowledge of his personal income, he may pay whatever seems
to him proper.  There are no proceedings against him, if he is a noble;
the greatest circumspection is used towards persons of high rank.  "In
the provinces," says Turgot, " the capitation-tax of the privileged
classes has been successively reduced to an exceedingly small matter,
whilst the capitation-tax of those who are liable to the taille is
almost equal to the aggregate of that tax." And finally, "the
collectors think that they are obliged to act towards them with marked
consideration" even when they owe; "the result of which," says Necker,
"is that very ancient, and much too large amounts, of their
capitation-tax remain unpaid." Accordingly, not having been able to
repel the assault of the revenue services in front they evaded it or
diminished it until it became almost unobjectionable.  In Champagne, on
nearly 1,500,000 livres provided by the capitation-tax, they paid in
only 14,000 livres," that is to say, "2 sous and 2 deniers for the
same purpose which costs 12 sous per livre to those chargeable with
the taille." According to Calonne, "if concessions and privileges had
been suppressed the vingtièmes would have furnished double the
amount." In this respect the most opulent were the most skillful in
protecting themselves.  "With the intendants," said the Duc d'Orleans,
"I settle matters, and pay about what I please," and he calculated
that the provincial administration, rigorously taxing him, would cause
him to lose 300,000 livres rental.  It has been proved that the princes
of the blood paid, for their two-twentieths, 188,000 instead of
2,400,000 livres.  In the main, in this régime, exception from taxation
is the last remnant of sovereignty or, at least, of independence.  The
privileged person avoids or repels taxation, not merely because it
despoils him, but because it belittles him; it is a mark of the
commoner, that is to say, of former servitude, and he resists the fisc
(the revenue services) as much through pride as through interest.

IV.  Their Feudal Rights.

These advantages are the remains of primitive sovereignty.

Let us follow him home to his own domain.  A bishop, an abbé, a
chapter of the clergy, an abbess, each has one like a lay seignior;
for, in former times, the monastery and the church were small
governments like the county and the duchy.  -Intact on the other bank
of the Rhine, almost ruined in France, the feudal structure everywhere
discloses the same plan.  In certain places, better protected or less
attacked, it has preserved all its ancient externals.  At Cahors, the
bishop-count of the town had the right, on solemnly officiating, "to
place his helmet, cuirass, gauntlets and sword on the altar."[20]  At
Besançon, the archbishop-prince has six high officers, who owe him
homage for their fiefs, and who attend at his coronation and at his
obsequies.  At Mende,[21] the bishop, seignior-suzerain for Gévaudan
since the eleventh century, appoints "the courts, ordinary judges and
judges of appeal, the commissaries and syndics of the country." He
disposes of all the places, "municipal and judiciary." Entreated to
appear in the assembly of the three orders of the province, he
"replies that his place, his possessions and his rank exalting him
above every individual in his diocese.  He cannot sit under the
presidency of any person; that, being seignior-suzerain of all estates
and particularly of the baronies, he cannot give way to his vassals."
In brief that he is king, or but little short of it, in his own
province.  At Remiremont, the noble chapter of canonesses has,
"inferior, superior, and ordinary judicature in fifty-two bans of
seigniories," nominates seventy-five curacies and confers ten male
canonships.  It appoints the municipal officers of the town, and,
besides these, three lower and higher courts, and everywhere the
officials in the jurisdiction over woods and forests.  Thirty-two
bishops, without counting the chapters, are thus temporal seigniors,
in whole or in part, of their episcopal town, sometimes of the
surrounding district, and sometimes, like the bishop of St.  Claude, of
the entire country.  Here the feudal tower has been preserved.
Elsewhere it is plastered over anew, and more particularly in the
appanages.  In these domains, comprising more than twelve of our
departments, the princes of the blood appoint to all offices in the
judiciary and to all clerical livings.  Being substitutes of the king
they enjoy his serviceable and honorary rights.  They are almost
delegated kings, and for life; for they not only receive all that the
king would receive as seignior, but again a portion of that which he
would receive as monarch.  For example, the house of Orleans collects
the excises,[22] that is to say the duty on liquors, on works in gold
or silver, on manufactures of iron, on steel, on cards, on paper and
starch, in short, on the entire sum-total of one of the most onerous
indirect taxes.  It is not surprising, if, having a nearly sovereign
situation, they have a council, a chancellor, an organized debt, a
court,[23] a domestic ceremonial system, and that the feudal edifice
in their hands should put on the luxurious and formal trappings which
it had assumed in the hands of the king.

Let us turn to its inferior personages, to a seignior of medium
rank, on his square league of ground, amidst the thousand inhabitants
who were formerly his villeins or his serfs, within reach of the
monastery, or chapter, or bishop whose rights intermingle with his
rights.  Whatever may have been done to abase him his position is still
very high.  He is yet, as the intendants say, "the first inhabitant;" a
prince whom they have half despoiled of his public functions and
consigned to his honorary and available rights, but who nevertheless
remains a prince.[24] -- He has his bench in the church, and his right
of sepulture in the choir; the tapestry bears his coat of arms; they
bestow on him incense, "holy water by distinction." Often, having
founded the church, he is its patron, choosing the curate and claiming
to control him; in the rural districts we see him advancing or
retarding the hour of the parochial mass according to his fancy.  If he
bears a title he is supreme judge, and there are entire provinces,
Maine and Anjou, for example, where there is no fief without the
judge.  In this case he appoints the bailiff; the registrar, and other
legal and judicial officers, attorneys, notaries, seigniorial
sergeants, constabulary on foot or mounted, who draw up documents or
decide in his name in civil and criminal cases on the first trial.  He
appoints, moreover, a forest-warden, or decides forest offenses, and
enforces the penalties, which this officer inflicts.  He has his prison
for delinquents of various kinds, and sometimes his forked gibbets.  On
the other hand, as compensation for his judicial costs, he obtains the
property of the man condemned to death and the confiscation of his
estate.  He succeeds to the bastard born and dying in his seigniory
without leaving a testament or legitimate children.  He inherits from
the possessor, legitimately born, dying in testate in his house
without apparent heirs.  He appropriates to himself movable objects,
animate or inanimate, which are found astray and of which the owner is
unknown; he claims one-half or one-third of treasure-trove, and, on
the coast, he takes for himself the waif of wrecks.  And finally, what
is more fruitful, in these times of misery, he becomes the possessor
of abandoned lands that have remained untilled for ten years.-Other
advantages demonstrate still more clearly that he formerly possessed
the government of the canton.  Such are, in Auvergne, in Flanders, in
Hainaut, in Artois, in Picardy, Alsace, and Lorraine, the dues de
poursoin ou de sauvement (care or safety within the walls of a town),
paid to him for providing general protection.  The dues of de guet et
de garde (watch and guard), claimed by him for military protection; of
afforage, are exacted of those who sell beer, wine and other
beverages, whole-sale or retail.  The dues of fouage, dues on fires, in
money or grain, which, according to many common-law systems, he levies
on each fireside, house or family.  The dues of pulvérage, quite common
in Dauphiny-and Provence, are levied on passing flocks of sheep.  Those
of the lods et ventes (lord's due), an almost universal tax, consist
of the deduction of a sixth, often of a fifth or even a fourth, of the
price of every piece of ground sold, and of every lease exceeding nine
years.  The dues for redemption or relief are equivalent to one year's
income, aid that he receives from collateral heirs, and often from
direct heirs.  Finally, a rarer due, but the most burdensome of all, is
that of acapte ou de plaid-a-merci, which is a double rent, or a
year's yield of fruits, payable as well on the death of the seignior
as on that of the copyholder.  These are veritable taxes, on land, on
movables, personal, for licenses, for traffic, for mutations, for
successions, established formerly on the condition of performing a
public service which he is no longer obliged to perform.

Other dues are also ancient taxes, but he still performs the
service for which they are a quittance.  The king, in fact, suppresses
many of the tolls, twelve hundred in 1724, and the suppression is kept
up.  A good many still remain to the profit of the seignior, - on
bridges, on highways, on fords, on boats ascending   or descending,
several being very lucrative, one of them producing 90,000 livres[25].
He pays for the expense of keeping up bridge, road, ford and towpath.
In like manner, on condition of maintaining the market-place and of
providing scales and weights gratis, he levies a tax on provisions and
on merchandise brought to his fair or to his market.  - At Angoulême a
forty-eighth of the grain sold, at Combourg near Saint-Malo, so much
per head of cattle, elsewhere so much on wine, eatables and fish[26]
Having formerly built the oven, the winepress, the mill and the
slaughterhouse, he obliges the inhabitants to use these or pay for
their support, and he demolishes all constructions, which might enter
into competition with him[27].  These, again, are evidently monopolies
and octrois going back to the time when he was in possession of public
authority.

Not only did he then possess the public authority but also
possessed the soil and the men on it.  Proprietor of men, he is so
still, at least in many respects and in many provinces.  "In Champagne
proper, in the Sénonais, in la Marche, in the Bourbonnais, in the
Nivernais, in Burgundy, in Franche-Comté, there are none, or very few
domains, no signs remaining of ancient servitude .  .  .  .  A good many
personal serfs, or so constituted through their own gratitude, or that
of their progenitors, are still found."[28]  There, man is a serf,
sometimes by virtue of his birth, and again through a territorial
condition.  Whether in servitude, or as mortmains, or as cotters, one
way or another, 1,500,000 individuals, it is said, wore about their
necks a remnant of the feudal collar; this is not surprising since, on
the other side of the Rhine, almost all the peasantry still wear it.
The seignior, formerly master and proprietor of all their goods and
chattels and of all their labor, can still exact of them from ten to
twelve corvées per annum and a fixed annual tax.  In the barony of
Choiseul near Chaumont in Champagne, "the inhabitants are required to
plow his lands, to sow and reap them for his account and to put the
products into his barns.  Each plot of ground, each house, every head
of cattle pays a quit-claim; children may inherit from their parents
only on condition of remaining with them; if absent at the time of
their decease he is the inheritor." This is what was styled in the
language of the day an estate "with excellent dues." -Elsewhere the
seignior inherits from collaterals, brothers or nephews, if they were
not in community with the defunct at the moment of his death, which
community is only valid through his consent.  In the Jura and the
Nivernais, he may pursue fugitive serfs, and demand, at their death,
not only the property left by them on his domain, but, again, the
pittance acquired by them elsewhere.  At Saint-Claude he acquires this
right over any person that passes a year and a day in a house
belonging to the seigniory.  As to ownership of the soil we see still
more clearly that he once had entire possession of it.  In the district
subject to his jurisdiction the public domain remains his private
domain; roads, streets and open squares form a part of it; he has the
right to plant trees in them and to take trees up.  In many provinces,
through a pasturage rent, he obliges the inhabitants to pay for
permits to pasture their cattle in the fields after the crop, and in
the open common lands, (les terres vaines et vagues).  Unnavigable
streams belong to him, as well as islets and accumulations formed in
them and the fish that are found in them.  He has the right of the
chase over the whole extent of his jurisdiction, this or that commoner
being sometimes compelled to throw open to him his park enclosed by
walls.

One more trait serves to complete the picture.  This head of the
State, a proprietor of man and of the soil, was once a resident
cultivator on his own small farm amidst others of the same class, and,
by this title, he reserved to himself certain working privileges which
he always retained.  Such is the right of banvin, still widely
diffused, consisting of the privilege of selling his own wine, to the
exclusion of all others, during thirty or forty days after gathering
the crop.  Such is, in Touraine, the right of préage, which is the
right to send his horses, cows and oxen "to browse under guard in his
subjects' meadows." Such is, finally, the monopoly of the great dove-
cot, from which thousands of pigeons issue to feed at all times and
seasons and on all grounds, without any one daring to kill or take
them.  Through another effect of the same qualification he imposes
quit-claims on property on which he has formerly given perpetual
leases, and, under the terms cens, censives (quit-rents), carpot
(share in wine), champart (share in grain), agrier (a cash commission
on general produce), terrage parciere (share of fruits).  All these
collections, in money or in kind, are as various as the local
situations, accidents and transactions could possibly be.  In the
Bourbonnais he has one-quarter of the crop; in Berry twelve sheaves
out of a hundred.  Occasionally his debtor or tenant is a community:
one deputy in the National Assembly owned a fief of two hundred casks
of wine on three thousand pieces of private property.[29] Besides,
through the retrait censuel (a species of right of redemption), he can
"retain for his own account all property sold on the condition of
remunerating the purchaser, but previously deducting for his benefit
the lord's dues (lods and ventes)." The reader, finally, must take
note that all these restrictions on property constitute, for the
seignior, a privileged credit as well on the product as on the price
of the ground, and, for the copyholders, an unprescriptive,
indivisible and irredeemable debt.-Such are the feudal.  To form an
idea of them in their totality we must always imagine the count,
bishop or abbot of the tenth century as sovereign and proprietor in
his own canton.  The form which human society then takes grows out of
the exigencies of near and constant danger with a view to local
defense.  By subordinating all interests to the necessities of living,
in such a way as to protect the soil by fixing on the soil, through
property and its enjoyment, a troop of brave men under the leadership
of a brave chieftain.  The danger having passed away the structure
became dilapidated.  For a pecuniary compensation the seigniors allowed
the economical and tenacious peasant to pick off it a good many
stones.  Through constraint they suffered the king to appropriate to
himself the public portion.  The primitive foundation remains, property
as organized in ancient times, the fettered or exhausted land
supporting a social conformation that has melted away, in short, an
order of privileges and of thralldom of which the cause and the
purpose have disappeared.  [30]

V.  They may be justified by local and general services.

All this does not suffice to render this order detrimental or even
useless.  In reality, the local chief who no longer performs his
ancient service may perform a new one in exchange for it.  Instituted
for war when life was militant, he may serve in quiet times when the
régime is pacific, while the advantage to the nation is great in which
this transformation is accomplished; for, retaining its chiefs, it is
relieved of the uncertain and perilous operation which consists in
creating others.  There is nothing more difficult to establish than a
government, that is to say, a stable government: this involves the
command of some and the obedience of all, which is against nature.
That a man in his study, often a feeble old person, should dispose of
the lives and property of twenty or thirty million men, most of whom
he has never seen; that he should order them to pay away a tenth or a
fifth of their income and they should do it; that he should order them
to go and slaughter or be slaughtered and that they should go; that
they should thus continue for ten years, twenty years, through every
kind of trial, defeat, misery and invasion, as with the French under
Louis XIV, the English under Pitt, the Prussians under Frederick II.,
without either sedition or internal disturbances, is certainly a
marvelous thing.  And, for a people to remain free it is essential that
they should be ready to do this always.  Neither this fidelity nor this
concord is due to sober reflection (la raison raisonnante); reason is
too vacillating and too feeble to bring about such a universal and
energetic result.  Abandoned to itself and suddenly restored to a
natural condition, the human flock is capable only of agitation, of
mutual strife until pure force at length predominates, as in barbarous
times, and until, amidst the dust and outcry, some military leader
rises up who is, generally, a butcher.  Historically considered it is
better to continue so than to begin over again.  Hence, especially when
the majority is uncultivated, it is beneficial to have chiefs
designated beforehand through the hereditary custom by which people
follow them, and through the special education by which they are
qualified.  In this case the public has no need to seek for them to
obtain them.  They are already at hand, in each canton, visible,
accepted beforehand; they are known by their names, their title, their
fortune, their way of living; deference to their authority is
established.  They are almost always deserving of this authority; born
and brought up to exercise it they find in tradition, in family
example and in family pride, powerful ties that nourish public spirit
in them; there is some probability of their comprehending the duties
with which their prerogative endows them.

Such is the renovation, which the feudal régime admits of.  The
ancient chieftain can still guarantee his pre-eminence by his
services, and remain popular without ceasing to be privileged.  Once a
captain in his district and a permanent gendarme, he is to become the
resident and beneficent proprietor, the voluntary promoter of useful
undertakings, obligatory guardian of the poor, the gratuitous
administrator and judge of the canton, the unsalaried deputy of the
king, that is to say, a leader and protector as previously, through a
new system of patronage accommodated to new circumstances.  Local
magistrate and central representative, these are his two principal
functions, and, if we extend our observation beyond France we find
that he exercises either one or the other, or both together.

Notes:

[1].  See note 1 at the end of the volume

[2].  One league (lieu) ca.  4 km.  (SR.)

[3].  Suger "Vie de Louis VI.," chap.  VIII.  - Philippe I.  became
master of the Château de Montlhéry only by marrying one of his sons to
the heiress of the fief.  He thus addressed his successor: "My child,
take good care to keep this tower of which the annoyances have made me
grow old, and whose frauds and treasons have given me no peace nor
rest'.

[4].  Léonce de Lavergne, "Les Assemblées Povinciales," p.  19.  -
Consult the official statement of the provincial assemblies, and
especially the chapters treating of the vingtièmes (an old tax of one-
twentieth on incomes.-TR.)

[5].  A report made by Treilhard in the name of the ecclesiastic
committee, (Moniteur, 19th December, 1789): The religious
establishments for sale in Paris alone were valued at 150 millions.
Later (in the session of the 13th February, 1791), Amelot estimates
the property sold and to be sold, not including forests, at 3,700
millions.  M. de Bouillé estimates the revenue of the clergy at 180
millions.  (Mémoires, p.44).  [French currency is so well known to
readers in general it is not deemed necessary to reduce statements of
this kind to the English or American standard, except in special
cases.-TR.)

[6] A report by Chasset on Tithes, April, 1790.  Out of 123
millions 23 go for the costs of collection: but, in estimating the
revenue of an individual the sums he pays to his intendants, overseers
and cashiers are not deducted.  - Talleyrand (October l0, 1789)
estimates the revenue of real property at 70 millions and its value at
2,100 millions.  On examination however both capital and revenue are
found considerably larger than at first supposed.  (Reports of
Treilbard and Chasset).  Moreover, in his valuation, Talleyrand left
out habitations and their enclosures as well as a reservation of one-
fourth of the forests.  Besides this there must be included in the
revenue before 1789 the seigniorial rights enjoyed by the Church.
Finally, according to Arthur Young, the rents which the French
proprietor received were not two and a half per cent.  as nowadays but
three and three quarters per cent -  The necessity of doubling the
figures to obtain a present money valuation is supported by
innumerable facts, and among others the price of a day's labor, which
at that time was nineteen sous.  (Arthur Young).  (Today, in 1999, in
France the minimum legal daily wage is around 300 francs.  20 sous
constituted a franc.  So the sums referred to by Taine under the
Revolution must be multiplied with at least 300 in order to compare
them with 1990 values.  To obtain dollars multiply with 50.  SR.)

[7].  National archives, among the papers of the ecclesiastical
committee, box (portfolios) 10, 11, 13, 25.  - Beugnot's Memoirs, I.
49, 79.  - Delbos, "L'Eglise de France," I.  399.  - Duc de Lévis,
"Souvenirs et Portraits," p.156.

[8].  Léonce de Lavergne, "Économie Rurale en France," p.24.  -
Perin, "La Jeunesse de Robespierre," (Statements of grievances in
Artois), p.317.  ( In French "cahiers des doleances" - statements of
local complaints and expectations - prepared all over France for use
by their delegates for the Ètats Generaux.  SR.)

[9].  Boiteau, "État de la France en 1789," p.47.  Voltaire,
"Politique et Legislation," the petition of the serfs of St.  Claude.

[10].  Necker, "De l'Administration des Finances," II.  272.

[11].  De Bouillé, "Mémoires," p.41.  It must not be forgotten that
these figures must be doubled to show corresponding sums of the
present day.  10,000 livres (francs) rental in 1766 equal in value
20,000 in 1825.  (Madame de Genlis, "Memoirs," chap.  IX).   Arthur
Young, visiting a château in Seine-et-Marne, writes: "I have been
speaking to Madame de Guerchy; and I have learned from this
conversation that to live in a château like this with six men
servants, five maids, eight horses, a garden and a regular table, with
company, but never go to Paris, might be done for 1,000 louis per
annum.  It would in England cost 2,000.  At the present day in France
24,000 francs would be 50,000 and more." Arthur Young adds: "There are
gentlemen (noblesse) that live in this country on 6,000 or 8000 and
keep two men, two maids, three horses and a cabriolet." To do this
nowadays would require from 20,000 to 25,000.  - It has become much
more expensive, especially due to the rail-ways, to live in the
provinces.  "According to my friends du Rouergue," he says again, "I
could live at Milhau with my family in the greatest abundance on 100
louis (2,000 francs); there are noble families supporting themselves
on revenues of fifty and even twenty-five louis." At Milhau, to day,
prices are triple and even quadruple.  - In Paris, a house in the Rue
St.  Honore which was rented for 6,000 francs in 1787 is now rented for
16,000 francs.

[12].   "Rapports de l'Agence du clergé de 1780 à 1785." In
relation to the feudal rights the abolition of which is demanded in
Boncerf's work, the chancellor Séguier said in 1775: "Our Kings have
themselves declared that they are, fortunately, impotent to make any
attack on property."

[13].  Léonce de Lavergne, "Les Assemblées provinciales," p.296.
Report of M. Schwendt on Alsace in 1787.  -  Warroquier, "Etat de la
France en 1789," I.541.  -  Necker, "De l'Administration des Finances,"
I.  19, 102.  - Turgot, (collection of economists), "Réponse aux
observations du garde des sceaux sur la suppression des corvées," I.
559.

[14].  This term embraces various taxes originating in feudal times,
and rendered particularly burdensome to the peasantry through the
management of the privileged classes.  -TR.

[15].  The arpent measures between one and one and a half acres.  -TR

[16].  De Tocqueville, "L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution," p.  406.
"The inhabitants of Montbazon had subjected to taxation the stewards
of the duchy which belonged to the Prince de Rohan.  This prince caused
this abuse to be stopped and succeeded in recovering the sum of 5,344
livres which he had been made to pay unlawfully under this right"

[17].  Necker, "Administration des Finances:" ordinary taxation (la
taille) produced 91 millions; les vingtièmes 76,500,000; the
capitation tax 41,500,000.

[18].  Raudot, "La France avant la Révolution," p.  51.  - De Bouillé,
"Mémoires," p.  44.  -   Necker, "De 1'Administration des Finances," II,
p.  181.  The above relates to what was called the clergy of France,
(116 dioceses).  The clergy called foreign, consisted of that of the
three bishoprics and of the regions conquered since Louis XIV; it had
a separate régime and paid somewhat like the nobles.  - The décimes
which the clergy of France levied on its property amounted to a sum of
10,500,000 livres.

[19].  De Toqueville, ib.  104, 381, 407.  - Necker, ib.  I.  102.  -
Boiteau, ib.  362.  - De Bouillé, ib.  26, 41, and the following pages.
Turgot, ib.  passim.  - Cf.  passim.  - Cf.  Book V, ch.  2, on the
taillage.

[20].  See "La France ecclésiastique, 1788," for these details.

[21].  Official statements and manuscript reports of the States-
General of 1789.  "Archives nationales," vol.  LXXXVIII pp.  23, 85, 121,
122], 152.  Procès-verbal of January 12, 1789.

[22].  Necker, "De l'Administration des Finances," V.  II.  pp.  271,
272.  "The house Orleans, he says, is in possession of the excises." He
estimates this tax at 51,000,000 for the entire kingdom.

[23].  Beugnot, "Mémoires," V.  I.  p.  77.  Observe the ceremonial
system with the Duc de Penthièvre, chapters I., III.  The Duc d'Orléans
organizes a chapter and bands of canonesses.  The post of chancellor to
the Duc d'Orléans is worth 100,000 livres per annum, ("Gustave III.  et
la cour de France," by Geffroy, I.  410.)

[24].  De Tocqueville, ibid.  p.40.  - Renauldon, advocate in the
bailiwick of Issoudun, "Traité historique et pratique des droits
seigneuriaux, 1765," pp.  8, 10, 81 and passim.  - Statement of
grievance of a magistrate of the Chatelet on seigniorial judgments,
1789.  - Duvergier, "Collection des Lois," Decrees of the 15-28 March,
1790, on the abolition of the feudal régime, Merlin of Douai,
reporter, I.  114 Decrees of 19-23 July, 1790, I.  293.  Decrees of the
13-20 April, 1791, (I.  295.)

[25].  National archives, G, 300, (1787).  "M. de Boullongne,
seignior of Montereau, here possesses a toll-right consisting of 2
deniers (farthings) per ox, cow, calf or pig; 1 per sheep; 2 for a
laden animal; 1 sou and 8 deniers for each four-wheeled vehicle; 5
deniers for a two- wheeled vehicle, and 10 deniers for a vehicle drawn
by three, four, or five horses; besides a tax of 10 deniers for each
barge, boat or skiff ascending the river; the same tax for each team
of horses dragging the boats up; 1 denier for each empty cask going
up." Analogous taxes are enforced at Varennes for the benefit of the
Duc de Chatelet, seignior of Varennes.

[26].  National archives, K, 1453, No.1448: A letter by M. de
Meulan, dated June 12, 1789.  This tax on grain belonged at that time
to the Comte d'Artois.  - Châteaubriand, "Mémoires," I.73.

[27].  Renauldon, ibid..  249, 258.  "There are few seignioral towns
which have a communal slaughter-house.  The butcher must obtain special
permission from the seignior." - The tax on grinding was an average of
a sixteenth.  In many provinces, Anjou, Berry, Maine, Brittany, there
was a lord's mill for cloths and barks.

[28].  Renauldon, ibid..  pp.  181, 200, 203; observe that he wrote
this in 1765.  Louis XVI.  suppressed serfdom on the royal domains in
1778; and many of the seigniors, especially in Franche-Comté, followed
his example.  Beugnot, "Mémoires," V.  I.  p.142.  - Voltaire, "Mémoire
au roi sur les serfs du Jura." - "Mémoires de Bailly," II.  214,
according to an official report of the Nat.  Ass., August 7, 1789.  I
rely on this report and on the book of M. Clerget, curate of Onans in
Franche-Comté who is mentioned in it.  M. Clerget says that there are
still at this time (1789) 1,500,000 subjects of the king in a state of
servitude but he brings forward no proofs to support these figures.
Nevertheless it is certain that the number of serfs and mortmains is
still very great.  National archives, H; 723, registers on mortmains in
Franche-Comté in 1788; H.  200, registers by Amelot on Burgundy in
1785.  "In the sub-delegation of Charolles the inhabitants seem a
century behind the age; being subject to feudal tenures, such as mort-
main, neither mind nor body have any play.  The redemption of mortmain,
of which the king himself has set the example, has been put at such an
exorbitant price by laymen, that the unfortunate sufferers cannot, and
will not be able to secure it.

[29].  Boiteau, ibid..  p.  25, (April, 1790), - Beugnot, "Mémoires,"
I.  142.

[30].  See END-NOTE 2 at the end of the volume





CHAPTER III.  LOCAL SERVICES DUE BY THE PRIVILEGED CLASSES.

I.  Examples in Germany and England.  - These services are not
rendered by the privileged classes in France.

LET us consider the first one, local government.  There are
countries at the gates of France in which feudal subjection, more
burdensome than in France, seems lighter because, in the other scale,
the benefits counterbalance disadvantages.  At Munster, in 1809,
Beugnot finds a sovereign bishop, a town of convents and a large
seigniorial mansion, a few merchants for indispensable trade, a small
bourgeoisie, and, all around, a peasantry composed of either colons or
serfs.  The seignior deducts a portion of all their crops in provisions
or in cattle, and, at their deaths, a portion of their inheritances.
If they go away their property revert to him.  His servants are
chastised like Russian moujiks, and in each outhouse is a trestle for
this purpose "without prejudice to graver penalties," probably the
bastinado and the like.  But "never did the culprit entertain the
slightest idea of complaint or appeal." For if the seignior whips them
as the father of family he protects them "as the father of a family,
ever coming to their assistance when misfortune befalls them, and
taking care of them in their illness." He provides an asylum for them
in old age; he looks after their widows, and rejoices when they have
plenty of children.  He is bound to them by common sympathies they are
neither miserable nor uneasy; they know that, in every extreme or
unforeseen necessity, he will be their refuge.[1] In the Prussian states
and according to the code of Frederick the Great, a still more
rigorous servitude is atoned for by similar obligations.  The
peasantry, without their seignior's permission, cannot alienate a
field, mortgage it, cultivate it differently, change their occupation
or marry.  If they leave the seigniory he can pursue them in every
direction and bring them back by force.  He has the right of
surveillance over their private life, and he chastises them if drunk
or lazy.  When young they serve for years as servants in his mansion;
as cultivators they owe him corvees and, in certain places, three
times a week.  But, according to both law and custom, he is obliged "to
see that they are educated, to succor them in indigence, and, as far
as possible, to provide them with the means of support." Accordingly
he is charged with the duties of the government of which he enjoys the
advantages, and, under the heavy hand which curbs them, but which
sustains them, we do not find his subjects recalcitrant.  In England,
the upper class attains to the same result by other ways.  There also
the soil still pays the ecclesiastic tithe, strictly the tenth, which
is much more than in France.[2] The squire, the nobleman, possesses a
still larger portion of the soil than his French neighbor and, in
truth, exercises greater authority in his canton.  But his tenants, the
lessees and the farmers, are no longer his serfs, not even his
vassals; they are free.  If he governs it is through influence and not
by virtue of a command.  Proprietor and patron, he is held in respect.
Lord-lieutenant, officer in the militia, administrator, justice, he is
visibly useful.  And, above all, he lives at home, from father to son;
he belongs to the district.  He is in hereditary and constant relation
with the local public through his occupations and through his
pleasures, through the chase and caring for the poor, through his
farmers whom he admits at his table, and through his neighbors whom he
meets in committee or in the vestry.  This shows how the old
hierarchies are maintained: it is necessary, and it suffices, that
they should change their military into a civil order of things and
find modern employment for the chieftain of feudal times.

II.  Resident Seigniors.

 Remains of the beneficent feudal spirit.-They are not rigorous
with their tenants but no longer retain the local government.-Their
isolation.-Insignificance or mediocrity of their means of
subsistence.-Their expenditure.-Not in a condition to remit dues.-
Sentiments of peasantry towards them.

If we go back a little way in our history we find here and there
similar nobles.[3] Such was the Duc de Saint-Simon, father of the
writer, a real sovereign in his government of Blaye, a respected by
the king himself.  Such was the grandfather Mirabeau, in his chateau of
Mirabeau in Provence, the haughtiest, most absolute, most intractable
of men, "demanding that the officers whom he appointed in his regiment
should be favorably received by the king and by his ministers,"
tolerating the inspectors only as a matter of form, but heroic,
generous, faithful, distributing the pension offered to himself among
six wounded captains under his command, mediating for poor litigants
in the mountain, driving off his grounds the wandering attorneys who
come to practice their chicanery, "the natural protector of man even
against ministers and the king.  A party of tobacco inspectors having
searched his curate's house, he pursues them so energetically on
horseback that they hardly escape him by fording the Durance.
Whereupon, "he wrote to demand the dismissal of the officers,
declaring that unless this was done every person employed in the
Excise should be driven into the Rhine or the sea; some of them were
dismissed and the director himself came to give him satisfaction."
Finding his canton sterile and the settlers on it idle he organized
them into groups, women and children, and, in the foulest weather,
puts himself at their head, with his twenty severe wounds and neck
supported by a piece of silver.  He pays them to work making them clear
off the lands, which he gives them on leases of a hundred years, and
he makes them enclose a mountain of rocks with high walls and plant it
with olive trees.  "No one, under any pretext could be excused from
working unless he was ill, and in this case under treatment, or
occupied on his own property, a point in which my father could not be
deceived, and nobody would have dared to do it." These are the last
offshoots of the old, knotty, savage trunk, but still capable of
affording shelter.  Others could still be found in remote cantons, in
Brittany and in Auvergne, veritable district commanders, and I am sure
that in time of need the peasants would obey them as much out of
respect as from fear.  Vigor of heart and of body justifies its own
ascendancy, while the superabundance of energy, which begins in
violence, ends in beneficence.

Less independent and less harsh a paternal government subsists
elsewhere, if not in the law at least through custom.  In Brittany,
near Tréguier and Lannion, says the bailiff of Mirabeau,[4] "the entire
staff of the coast-guard is composed of people of quality and of stock
going back a thousand years.  I have not seen one of them get irritated
with a peasant-soldier, while, at the same time, I have seen on the
part of the latter an air of filial respect for them .  .  .  .  It is a
terrestrial paradise with respect to patriarchal manners, simplicity
and true grandeur; the attitude of the peasants towards the seigniors
is that of an affectionate son with his father; and the seigniors in
talking with the peasants use their rude and coarse language, and
speak only in a kind and genial way.  We see mutual regard between
masters and servants." Farther south, in the Bocage, a wholly
agricultural region, and with no roads, where ladies are obliged to
travel on horseback and in ox-carts, where the seignior has no
farmers, but only twenty-five or thirty métayers who work for him on
shares, the supremacy of the great is no offense to their inferiors.
People live together harmoniously when living together from birth to
death, familiarly, and with the same interests, occupations and
pleasures; like soldiers with their officers, on campaigns and under
tents, in subordination although in companionship, familiarity never
endangering respect.  "The seignior often visits them on their small
farms,[5] talks with them about their affairs, about taking care of
their cattle, sharing in the accidents and mishaps which likewise
seriously affect him.  He attends their children's weddings and drinks
with the guests.  On Sunday there are dances in the chateau court, and
the ladies take part in them." When he is about to hunt wolves or
boars the curate gives notice of it in the sermon; the peasants, with
their guns gaily assemble at the rendezvous, finding the seignior who
assigns them their posts, and strictly observing the directions he
gives them.  Here are soldiers and a captain ready made.  A little
later, and of their own accord, they will choose him for commandant in
the national guard, mayor of the commune, chief of the insurrection,
and, in 1792, the marksmen of the parish are to march under him
against " the blues" as, at this epoch against the wolves.  Such are
the remnants of the good feudal spirit, like the scattered remnants of
a submerged continent.  Before Louis XIV., the spectacle was similar
throughout France.  "The rural nobility of former days," says the
Marquis de Mirabeau, "spent too much time over their cups, slept on
old chairs or pallets, mounted and started off to hunt before
daybreak, met together on St.  Hubert's, and did not part until after
the octave of St.  Martin's.  .  .  .  These nobles led a gay and hard
life, voluntarily, costing the State very little, and producing more
through its residence and manure than we of today with our tastes, our
researches, our cholics and our vapors .  .  The custom, and it may be
said, the obsession of making presents to the seigniors, is well
known.  I have, in my lifetime, seen this custom everywhere disappear,
and rightly so .  .  .  .  The seigniors are no longer of any consequence
to them; is quite natural that they should be forgotten by them as
they forget .  .  .  .  The seignior being no longer known on his estates
everybody pillages him, which is right."[6] Everywhere, except in remote
comers, the affection and unity of the two classes has disappeared;
the shepherd is separated from his flock, and pastors of the people
end in being considered its parasites.

Let us first follow them into the provinces.  We here find only the
minor class of nobles and a portion of those of medium rank; the rest
are in Paris.[7] There is the same line of separation in the church:
abbés-commendatory, bishops and archbishops very seldom live at home.
The grand-vicars and canons live in  the large towns; only priors and
curates dwell in the rural districts.  Ordinarily the entire
ecclesiastic or lay staff is absent; residents are furnished only by
the secondary or inferior grades.  What are their relations with the
peasant? One point is certain, and that is that they are not usually
hard, nor even indifferent, to him.  Separated by rank they are not so
by distance; neighborhood is of itself a bond among men.  I have read
in vain, but I have not found them the rural tyrants, which the
declaimers of the Revolution portray them.  Haughty with the bourgeois
they are generally kind to the villager.  "Let any one travel through
the provinces," says a contemporary advocate, "over the estates
occupied by the seigniors.  Out of one hundred one may be found
tyrannizing his dependents; all the others, patiently share the misery
of those subject to their jurisdiction .  .  .  They give their debtors
time, remit sums due, and afford them every facility for settlement.
They mollify and temper the sometimes over-rigorous proceedings of the
fermiers, stewards and other men of business."[8] An Englishwoman, who
observes them in Provence just after the Revolution, says that,
detested at Aix, they are much beloved on their estates.  "Whilst they
pass the first citizens with their heads erect and an air of disdain,
they salute peasants with extreme courtesy and affability." One of
them distributes among the women, children and the aged on his domain
wool and flax to spin during the bad season, and, at the end of the
year, he offers a prize of one hundred livres for the two best pieces
of cloth.  In numerous instances the peasant-purchasers of their land
voluntarily restore it for the purchase money.  Around Paris, near
Romainville, after the terrible storm of 1788 there is prodigal alms-
giving; "a very wealthy man immediately distributes forty thousand
francs among the surrounding unfortunates." During the winter, in
Alsace and in Paris, everybody is giving; "in front of each hotel
belonging to a well-known family a big log is burning to which, night
and day, the poor can come and warm themselves." In the way of
charity, the monks who remain on their premises and witness the public
misery continue faithful to the spirit of their institution.  On the
birth of the Dauphin the Augustins of Montmorillon in Poitou pay out
of their own resources the tailles and corvées of nineteen poor
families.  In 1781, in Provence, the Dominicans of Saint Maximin
support the population of their district in which the tempest had
destroyed the vines and the olive trees.  "The Carthusians of Paris
furnish the poor with eighteen hundred pounds of bread per week.
During the winter of 1784 there is an increase of alms-giving in all
the religious establishments; their farmers distribute aid among the
poor people of the country, and, to provide for these extra
necessities, many of the communities increase the rigor of their
abstinences." When at the end of 1789, their suppression is in
question, I find a number of protests in their favor, written by
municipal officers, by prominent individuals, by a crowd of
inhabitants, workmen and peasants, and these columns of rustic
signatures are eloquent.  Seven hundred families of Cateau-Cambrésis[9]
send in a petition to retain "the worthy abbés and monks of the Abbey
of St.  Andrew, their common fathers and benefactors, who fed them
during the tempest." The inhabitants of St.  Savin, in the Pyrénées,
"portray with tears of grief their consternation" at the prospect of
suppressing their abbey of Benedictines, the sole charitable
organization in this poor country.  At Sierk, Thionville, "the
Chartreuse," say the leading citizens, "is, for us, in every respect,
the Ark of the Lord; it is the main support of from more than twelve
to fifteen hundred persons who come it every day in the week.  This
year the monks have distributed amongst them their own store of grain
at sixteen livres less than the current price." The regular canons of
Domiévre, in Lorrraine, feed sixty poor persons twice a week; it is
essential to retain them, says the petition, "out of pity and
compassion for poor beings whose misery cannot be imagined; where
there no regular convents and canons in their dependency, the poor cry
with misery."[10] At Moutiers-Saint-John, near Sémur in Burgundy, the
Benedictines of Saint-Maur support the entire village  and supply it
this year with food during the famine.  Near Morley in Barrois, the
abbey of Auvey, of the Cistercian order, "was always, for every
village in the neighborhood, a bureau of charity." At Airvault, in
Poitou, the municipal officers, the colonel of the national guard, and
numbers of "peasants and inhabitants" demand the conservation of the
regular canons of St.  Augustin.  "Their existence," says the petition,
"is absolutely essential, as well for our town as for the country, and
we should suffer an irreparable loss in their suppression." The
municipality and permanent council of Soissons writes that the
establishment of Saint-Jean des Vignes "has always earnestly claimed
its share of the public charges.  This is the institution which, in
times of calamity, welcomes homeless citizens and provides them with
subsistence.  It alone bears the expenses of the assembly of the
bailiwick at the time of the election of deputies to the National
Assembly.  A company of the regiment of Armagnac is actually lodged
under its roof.  This institution is always found wherever sacrifices
are to be made." In scores of places declarations are made that the
monks are "the fathers of the poor." In the diocese of Auxerre, during
the summer of 1789, the Bernardines of Rigny "stripped themselves of
all they possessed in favor of the inhabitants of neighboring
villages: bread, grain, money and other supplies, have all been
lavished on about twelve hundred persons who, for more than six weeks,
never failed to present themselves at their door daily.  .  .  Loans,
advances made on farms, credit with the purveyors of the house, all
has contributed to facilitating their means for relieving the people."
I omit many other traits equally forcible; we see that the
ecclesiastical and lay seigniors are not simple egoists when they live
at home.  Man is compassionate of ills of which he is a witness;
absence is necessary to deaden their vivid impression; they move the
heart when the eye contemplates them.  Familiarity, moreover, engenders
sympathy; one cannot remain insensible to the trials of a poor man to
whom, for over twenty years, one says good-morning every day on
passing him, with whose life one is acquainted, who is not an abstract
unit in the imagination, a statistical cipher, but a sorrowing soul
and a suffering body.  - And so much the more because, since the
writings of Rousseau and the economists, a spirit of humanity, daily
growing stronger, more penetrating and more universal, has arisen to
soften the heart.  Henceforth the poor are thought of, and it is
esteemed an honor to think of them.  We have only to read the registers
of the States-General[11] to see that spirit of philanthropy spreads
from Paris even to the chateaux and abbeys of the provinces.  I am
satisfied that, except for a few country squires, either huntsmen or
drinkers, carried away by the need of physical exercise, and confined
through their rusticity to an animal life, most of the resident
seigniors resembled, in fact or in intention, the gentry whom
Marmontel, in his moral tales, then brought on the stage.  Fashion took
this direction, and people in France always follow the fashion.  There
is nothing feudal in their characters; they are "sensible" people,
mild, very courteous, tolerably cultivated, fond of generalities, and
easily and quickly roused, and very much in earnest.  For instance like
that amiable logician the Marquis de Ferrières, an old light-horseman,
deputy from Saumur in the National Assembly, author of an article on
Theism, a moral romance and genial memoirs of no great importance;
nothing could be more remote from the ancient harsh and despotic
temperament.  They would be glad to relieve the people, and they try to
favor them as much as they can.[12] They are found detrimental, but they
are not wicked; the evil is in their situation and not in their
character.  It is their situation, in fact, which, allowing them rights
without exacting services, debars them from the public offices, the
beneficial influence, the effective patronage by which they might
justify their advantages and attach the peasantry to them.

But on this ground the central government has taken their place.
For a long time now have they been rather feeble against the
intendant, unable to protect their parish.  Twenty gentlemen cannot not
assemble and deliberate without the king's special permission.[13] If
those of Franche-Comté happen to dine together and hear a mass once a
year, it is through tolerance, and even then this harmless group may
assemble only in the presence of the intendant.  Separated from his
equals, the seignior, again, is further away from his inferiors.  The
administration of the village is of no concern to him; he is not even
tasked with its supervision.  The apportionment of taxes, the militia
contingent, the repairs of the church, the summoning and presiding
over a parish assembly, the making of roads, the establishment of
charity workshops, all this is the intendant's business or that of the
communal officers whom the intendant appoints or directs.[14] Except
through his justiciary rights, so much curtailed, the seignior is an
idler in public matters.[15]  If, by chance, he should desire to act in
an official capacity, to make some reclamation for the community, the
bureaus of administration would soon make him shut up.  Since Louis
XIV, the higher officials have things their own way; all legislation
and the entire administrative system operate against the local
seignior to deprive him of his functional efficiency and to confine
him to his naked title.  Through this separation of functions and title
his pride increases, as he becomes less useful.  His vanity deprived of
its broad pasture-ground, falls back on a small one; henceforth he
seeks distinctions and not influence.  He thinks only of precedence and
not of government.[16] In short, the local government, in the hands of
peasants commanded by bureaucrats, has become a common, offensive lot
of red tape.  "His pride would be wounded if he were asked to attend to
it.  Raising taxes, levying the militia, regulating the corvées, are
servile acts, the works of a secretary." He accordingly abstains,
remains isolated on his manor and leaves to others a task from which
he is excluded and which he disdains.  Far from protecting his
peasantry he is scarcely able to protect himself or to preserve his
immunities.  Or to avoid having his poll-tax and vingtiémes reduced.  Or
to obtain exemption from the militia for his domestics, to keep his
own person, dwelling, dependents, and hunting and fishing rights from
the universal usurpation which places all possessions and all
privileges in the hands of "Monseigneur l'intendant" and Messieurs the
sub-delegates.  And the more so because he is often poor.  Bouillé
estimates that all the old families, save two or three hundred, are
ruined.[17] I Rouergue several of them live on an income of fifty and
even twenty-five louis, (1000 and 500 francs).  In Limousin, says an
intendant at the beginning of the century, out of several thousands
there are not fifteen who have twenty thousand livres income.  In
Berry, towards 1754, "three-fourths of them die of hunger." In
Franche-Comté the fraternity to which we have alluded appears in a
humorous light, "after the mass each one returning to his domicile,
some on foot and others on their Rosinantes." In Brittany "lots of
gentlemen found as excisemen, on the farms or in the lowest
occupations." One M. de la Morandais becomes the overseer of an
estate.  A certain family with nothing but a small farm "attests its
nobility only by the pigeon-house; it lives like the peasants, eating
nothing but brown bread." Another gentleman, a widower, "passes his
time in drinking, living licentiously with his servants, and covering
butter-pots with the handsomest title-deeds of his lineage." All the
chevaliers de Châteaubriand," says the father, "were drunkards and
beaters of hares." He himself just makes shift to live in a miserable
way, with five domestics, a hound and two old mares " in a chateau
capable of accommodating a hundred seigniors with their suites." Here
and there in the various memoirs we see these strange superannuated
figures passing before the eye, for instance, in Burgundy, "gentlemen
huntsmen wearing gaiters and hob-nailed shoes, carrying an old rusty
sword under their arms dying with hunger and refusing to work."[18]
Elsewhere we encounter "M. de Pérignan, with his red garments, wig and
ginger face, having dry stone wails built on his domain, and getting
intoxicated with the blacksmith of the place;" related to Cardinal
Fleury, he is made the first Duc de Fleury.-Everything contributes to
this decay, the law, habits and customs, and, above all, the right of
primogeniture.  Instituted for the purpose of maintaining undivided
sovereignty and patronage it ruins the nobles since sovereignty and
patronage have no material to work on.  "In Brittany," says
Châteaubriand, "the elder sons of the nobles swept away two-thirds of
the property, while the younger sons shared in one-third of the
paternal heritage."[19] Consequently, "the younger sons of younger
sons soon come to the sharing of a pigeon, rabbit, hound and fowling-
piece.  The entire fortune of my grandfather did not exceed five
thousand livres income, of which his elder son had two-thirds, three
thousand three hundred livres, leaving one thousand six hundred and
sixty-six livres for the three younger ones, upon which sum the elder
still had a préciput claim."[20] This fortune, which crumbles away and
dies out, they neither know how, nor are they disposed, to restore by
commerce, manufactures or proper administration of it; it would be
derogatory.  "High and mighty seigniors of dove-cote, frog-pond and
rabbit-warren," the more substance they lack the more value they set
on the name.-Add to all this winter sojourn in town, the ceremonial
and expenses caused by vanity and social requirements, and the visits
to the governor and the intendant.  A man must be either a German or an
Englishman to be able to pass three gloomy, rainy months in a castle
or on a farm, alone, in companionship with peasants, at the risk of
becoming as awkward and as fantastic as they.[21] They accordingly run
in debt, become involved, sell one piece of ground and then another
piece.  A good many alienate the whole, excepting their small manor and
their seigniorial dues, the cens and the lods et ventes, and their
hunting and justiciary rights on the territory of which they were
formerly proprietors.[22] Since they must support themselves on these
privileges they must necessarily enforce them, even when the privilege
is burdensome, and even when the debtor is a poor man.  How could they
remit dues in grain and in wine when these constitute their bread and
wine for the entire year? How could they dispense with the fifth and
the fifth of the fifth (du quint et du requint) when this is the only
coin they obtain? Why, being needy should they not be exacting?
Accordingly, in relation to the peasant, they are simply his
creditors; and to this end come the feudal régime transformed by the
monarchy.  Around the chateau I see sympathies declining, envy raising
its head, and hatreds on the increase.  Set aside in public matters,
freed from taxation, the seignior remains isolated and a stranger
among his vassals; his extinct authority with his unimpaired
privileges form for him an existence apart.  When he emerges from it,
it is to forcibly add to the public misery.  From this soil, ruined by
the tax-man, he takes a portion of its product, so much it, sheaves of
wheat and so many measures of wine.  His pigeons and his game eat up
the crops.  People are obliged to grind in his mill, and to leave with
him a sixteenth of the flour.  The sale of a field for the sum of six
hundred livres puts one hundred livres into his pocket.  A brother's
inheritance reaches a brother only after he has gnawed out of it a
year's income.  A score of other dues, formerly of public benefit, no
longer serve but to support a useless private individual.  The peasant,
then as today, is eager for gain, determined and accustomed to do and
to suffer everything to save or gain a crown.  He ends by looking
angrily on the turret in which are preserved the archives, the rent-
roll, the detested parchments by means of which a Man of another
species, favored to the detriment of the rest, a universal creditor
and paid to do nothing, grazes over all the ground and feeds on all
the products.  Let the opportunity come to enkindle all this
covetousness, and the rent-roll will burn, and with it the turret, and
with the turret, the chateau.

III.  Absentee Seigniors.

Vast extent of their fortunes and rights.-Possessing greater
advantages they owe greater services.-Reasons for their absenteeism.-
Effect of it.-- Apathy of the provinces.-Condition of their estates.-
They give no alms.-Misery of their tenants.-Exactions of their
agents.-Exigencies of their debts.  - State of their justiciary.  -
Effects of their hunting rights.  - Sentiments of the peasantry towards
them.

The spectacle becomes still gloomier, on passing from the estates
on which the seigniors reside to those on which they are non-
residents.  Noble or ennobled, lay and ecclesiastic, the latter are
privileged among the privileged, and form an aristocracy inside of an
aristocracy.  Almost all the powerful and accredited families belong to
it whatever may be their origin and their date.[23] Through their
habitual or frequent residence near the court, through their alliances
or mutual visits, through their habits and their luxuries, through the
influence which they exercise and the enmities which they provoke,
they form a group apart, and are those who possess the most extensive
estates, the leading suzerainties, and the most complete and
comprehensive jurisdictions.  Of the court nobility and of the higher
clergy, they number perhaps, a thousand in each order, while their
small number only brings out in higher relief the enormity of their
advantages.  We have seen that the appanages of the princes of the
blood comprise a seventh of the territory; Necker estimates the
revenue of the estates enjoyed by the king's two brothers at two
millions.[24] The domains of the Ducs de Bouillon, d'Aiguillon, and
some others cover entire leagues, and, in immensity and continuity,
remind one of those, which the Duke of Sutherland and the Duke of
Bedford now possess in England.  With nothing else than his forests and
his canal, the Duke of Orleans, before marrying his wife, as rich as
himself, obtains an income of a million.  A certain seigniory, le
Clermontois, belonging to the Prince de Condé, contains forty thousand
inhabitants, which is the extent of a German principality; "moreover
all the taxes or subsidies occurring in le Clermontois are imposed for
the benefit of His Serene Highness, the king receiving absolutely
nothing."[25] Naturally authority and wealth go together, and, the
more an estate yields, the more its owner resembles a sovereign.  The
archbishop of Cambray, Duc de Cambray, Comte de Cambrésis, possesses
the suzerainty over all the fiefs of a region which numbers over
seventy-five thousand inhabitants.  He appoints one-half of the
aldermen of Cambray and the whole of the administrators of Cateau.  He
nominates the abbots to two great abbeys, and presides over the
provincial assemblies and the permanent bureau, which succeeds them.
In short, under the intendant, or at his side, he maintains a pre-
eminence and better still, an influence somewhat like that to day
maintained over his domain by grand duke incorporated into the new
German empire.  Near him, in Hainaut, the abbé of Saint-Armand
possesses seven-eighths of the territory of the provostship while
levying on the other eighth the seigniorial taxes of the corvées and
the dime.  He nominates the provost of the aldermen, so that, in the
words of the grievances, "he composes the entire State, or rather he
is himself the State."[26] I should never end if I were to specify all
these big prizes.  Let us select only those of the prelacy, and but one
particular side, that of money.  In the "Almanach Royal," and in "La
France Ecclésiastique" for 1788, we may read their admitted revenues.
The veritable revenue, however, is one-half more for the bishoprics,
an double and triple for the abbeys; and we must again double the
veritable revenue in order to estimate its value in the money of to
day.[27].  The one hundred and thirty-one bishops and arch-bishops
possess in the aggregate 5, 600, 000 livres of episcopal income and
1,200,000 livres in abbeys, averaging 50,000 livres per head as in the
printed record, and in reality 100,000.  A bishop thus, in the eyes of
his contemporaries, according to the statement of spectators cognizant
of the actual truth, was "a grand seignior, with an income of 100,000
livres."[28] Some of the most important sees are magnificently
endowed.  That of Sens brings in 70,000 livres; Verdun, 74,000; Tours,
82,000; Beauvais, Toulouse and Bayeux, 90,000; Rouen, 100,000; Auch,
Metz and Albi, 120,000; Narbonne, 160,000; Paris and Cambray, 200,000
according to official reports, and probably half as much more in sums
actually collected.  Other sees, less lucrative, are, proportionately,
still better provided.  Imagine a small provincial town, oftentimes not
even a petty sub-prefecture of our times, - Conserans, Mirepoix,
Lavaur, Rieux, Lombez, Saint-Papoul, Comminges, Luçon, Sarlat, Mende,
Fréjus, Lescar, Belley, Saint-Malo, Tréguier, Embrun, Saint-Claude,  -
and, in the neighborhood, less than two hundred, one hundred, and
sometimes even less than fifty parishes, and, as recompense for this
slight ecclesiastical surveillance, a prelate receiving from 25,000 to
70,000 livres, according to official statements; from 37,000 to
105,000 livres in actual receipts; and from 74,000 to 210,000 livres
in the money of to day.  As to the abbeys, I count thirty-three of them
producing to the abbé from 25,000 to 120,000 livres, and twenty-seven
which bring from 20,000 to 100,000 livres to the abbess.  Weigh these
sums taken from the Almanach, and bear in mind that they must be
doubled, and more, to obtain the real revenue, and be quadrupled, and
more, to obtain the actual value.  It is evident, that, with such
revenues, coupled with the feudal rights, police, justiciary and
administrative, which accompany them, an ecclesiastic or lay grand
seignior is, in fact, a sort of prince in his district.  He bears too
close a resemblance to the ancient sovereign to be entitled to live as
an ordinary individual.  His private advantages impose on him a public
character.  His rank, and his enormous profits, makes it incumbent on
him to perform proportionate services, and that, even under the sway
of the intendant, he owes to his vassals, to his tenants, to his
feudatories the support of his mediation, of his patronage and of his
gains.

To do this he must be in residence, but, generally, he is an
absentee.  For a hundred and fifty years a kind of all-powerful
attraction diverts the grandees from the provinces and impels them
towards the capital.  The movement is irresistible, for it is the
effect of two forces, the greatest and most universal that influence
mankind, one, a social position, and the other the national character.
A tree is not to be severed from its roots with impunity.  Appointed to
govern, an aristocracy frees itself from the land when it no longer
rules.  It ceases to rule the moment when, through increasing and
constant encroachments, almost the entire justiciary, the entire
administration, the entire police, each detail of the local or general
government, the power of initiating, of collaboration, of control
regarding taxation, elections, roads, public works and charities,
passes over into the hands of the intendant or of the sub-delegate,
under the supreme direction of the comptroller-general or of the
king's council.[29] Civil servants, men "of the robe and the quill,"
colorless commoners, perform the administrative work; there is no way
to prevent it.  Even with the king's delegates, a provincial governor,
were he hereditary, a prince of the blood, like the Condés in
Burgundy, must efface himself before the intendant; he holds no
effective office; his public duties consist of showing off and
providing entertainment.  Besides he would badly perform any others.
The administrative machine, with its thousands of hard, creaking and
dirty wheels, as Richelieu and Louis XIV, fashioned it, can work only
in the hands of workmen who may be dismissed at any time therefore
unscrupulous and prompt to give way to the judgment of the State.  It
is impossible to allow oneself to get mixed up with rogues of that
description.  He accordingly abstains, and abandons public affairs to
them.  Unemployed, bored, what could he now do on his domain, where he
no longer reigns, and where dullness overpowers him? He betakes
himself to the city, and especially to the court.  Moreover, only here
can he pursue a career; to be successful he has to become a courtier.
It is the will of the king, one must frequent his apartments to obtain
his favors; otherwise, on the first application for them the answer
will be, "Who is he? He is a man that I never see." In the king's eyes
there is no excuse for absence, even should the cause is a conversion,
with penitence for a motive.  In preferring God to the king, he has
deserted.  The ministers write to the intendants to ascertain if the
gentlemen of their province "like to stay at home," and if they
"refuse to appear and perform their duties to the king." Imagine the
grandeur of such attractions available at the court, governments,
commands, bishoprics, benefices, court-offices, survivor-ships,
pensions, credit, favors of every kind and degree for self and family.
All that a country of 25 millions men can offer that is desirable to
ambition, to vanity, to interest, is found here collected as in a
reservoir.  They rush to it and draw from it.  - And the more readily
because it is an agreeable place, arranged just as they would have it,
and purposely to suit the social aptitudes of the French character.
The court is a vast permanent drawing room to which " access is easy
and free to the king's subjects;" where they live with him, "in gentle
and virtuous society in spite of the almost infinite distance of rank
and power;" where the monarch prides himself on being the perfect
master of a household.[30] In fact, no drawing room was ever so well
kept up, nor so well calculated to retain its guests by every kind of
enjoyment, by the beauty, the dignity and the charm of its decoration,
by the selection of its company and by the interest of the spectacle.
Versailles is the only place to show oneself off; to make a figure, to
push one's way, to be amused, to converse or gossip at the head-
quarters of news, of activity and of public matters, with the élite of
the kingdom and the arbiters of fashion, elegance and taste.  "Sire,"
said M. de Vardes to Louis XIV, "away from Your Majesty one not only
feels miserable but ridiculous." None remain in the provinces except
the poor rural nobility; to live there one must be behind the age,
disheartened or in exile.  The king's banishment of a seignior to his
estates is the highest disgrace; to the humiliation of this fall is
added the insupportable weight of boredom.  The finest chateau on the
most beautiful site is a frightful "desert"; nobody is seen there save
the grotesques of a small town or the village peasants.[31]

"Exile alone," says Arthur Young, "can force the French nobility to
do what the English prefer to do, and that is to live on their estates
and embellish them."

 Saint-Simon and other court historians, on mentioning a ceremony,
repeatedly state that "all France was there"; in fact, every one of
consequence in France is there, and each recognizes the other by this
sign.  Paris and the court become, accordingly, the necessary sojourn
of all fine people.  In such a situation departure begets departure;
the more a province is forsaken the more they forsake it.  "There is
not in the kingdom," says the Marquis de Mirabeau, "a single estate of
any size of which the proprietor is not in Paris and who,
consequently, neglects his buildings and chateaux."[32] The lay grand
seigniors have their hotels in the capital, their entresol at
Versailles, and their pleasure-house within a circuit of twenty
leagues; if they visit their estates at long intervals, it is to hunt.
The fifteen hundred commendatory abbés and priors enjoy their
benefices as if they were so many remote farms.  The two thousand seven
hundred vicars and canons visit each other and dine out.  With the
exception of a few apostolic characters the one hundred and thirty-one
bishops stay at home as little as they can; nearly all of them being
nobles, all of them men of society, what could they do out of the
world, confined to a provincial town? Can we imagine a grand seignior,
once a gay and gallant abbé and now a bishop with a hundred thousand
livres income, voluntarily burying himself for the entire year at
Mende, at Comminges, in a paltry cloister? The interval has become too
great between the refined, varied and literary life of the great
center, and the monotonous, inert, practical life of the provinces.
Hence it is that the grand seignior who withdraws from the former
cannot enter into the latter, and he remains an absentee, at least in
feeling.

A country in which the heart ceases to impel the blood through its
veins presents a somber aspect.  Arthur Young, who traveled over France
between 1787 and 1789, is surprised to find at once such a vital
center and such dead extremities.  Between Paris and Versailles the
double file of vehicles going and coming extends uninterruptedly for
five leagues from morning till night.[33] The contrast on other roads
is very great.  Leaving Paris by the Orleans road, says Arthur Young,
"we met not one stage or diligence for ten miles; only two messageries
and very few chaises, not a tenth of what would have been met had we
been leaving London at the same hour." On the highroad near Narbonne,
"for thirty-six miles," he says, "I came across but one cabriolet,
half a dozen carts and a few women leading asses." Elsewhere, near St.
Girons, he notices that in two hundred and fifty miles he encountered
in all, "two cabriolets and three miserable things similar to our old
one-horse post chaise, and not one gentleman." Throughout this country
the inns are execrable; it is impossible to hire a wagon, while in
England, even in a town of fifteen hundred or two thousand
inhabitants, there are comfortable hotels and every means of
transport.  This proves that in France "there is no circulation." It is
only in very large towns that there is any civilization and comfort.
At Nantes there is a superb theater "twice as large as Drury-Lane and
five times as magnificent.  Mon Dieu! I cried to myself, do all these
wastes, moors, and deserts, that I have passed for 300 miles lead to
this spectacle? .  .  .  In a single leap you pass from misery to
extravagance, ...the country deserted, or if a gentleman in it, you
find him in some wretched hole to save that money which is lavished
with profusion in the luxuries of a capital." "A coach," says M. de
Montlosier, "set out weekly from the principal towns in the provinces
for Paris and was not always full, which tells us about the activity
in business.  There was a single journal called the Gazette de France,
appearing twice a week, which represents the activity of minds."[34]
Some magistrates of Paris in exile at Bourges in 1753 and 1754 give
the following picture of that place:

 "A town in which no one can be found with whom you can talk at
your ease on any topic whatever, reasonably or sensibly.  The nobles,
three-fourths of them dying of hunger, rotting with pride of birth,
keeping apart from men of the robe and of finance, and finding it
strange that the daughter of a tax-collector, married to a counselor
of the parliament of Paris, should presume to be intelligent and
entertain company.  The citizens are of the grossest ignorance, the
sole support of this species of lethargy in which the minds of most of
the inhabitants are plunged.  Women, bigoted and pretentious, and much
given to play and to gallantry."[35]

In this impoverished and benumbed society, among these Messieurs
Thibaudeau, the counselor, and Harpin, the tax-collector, among these
vicomtes de Sotenville and Countesses d'Escarbagnas, lives the
Archbishop, Cardinal de Larochefoucauld, grand almoner to the king,
provided with four great abbeys, possessing five hundred thousand
livres income, a man of the world, generally an absentee, and when at
home, finding amusement in the embellishing of his gardens and palace,
in short, the golden pheasant of an aviary in a poultry yard of
geese.[36] Naturally there is an entire absence of political thought.
"You cannot imagine," says the manuscript, "a person more indifferent
to all public matters." At a later period, in the very midst of events
of the gravest character, and which most nearly concern them, there is
the same apathy.  At Chateau-Thierry on the 4th of July, 1789,[37]
there is not a café in which a new paper can be found; there is but
one at Dijon; at Moulins, the 7th of August, "in the best café in the
town, where I found near twenty tables set for company, but as for a
newspaper I might as well have demanded an elephant." Between
Strasbourg and Besançon there is not a gazette.  At Besançon there is
"nothing but the Gazette de France, for which, this period, a man of
common sense would not give one sol, .  .  .  and the Courier de l'Europe
a fortnight old; and well-dressed people are now talking of the news
of two or three weeks past, and plainly by their discourse know
nothing of what is passing.  At Clermont "I dined, or supped, five
times at the table d'hôte with from twenty to thirty merchants, trade
men, officers, etc., and it is not easy for me to express the
insignificance, - the inanity of their conversation.  Scarcely any
politics are mentioned at a moment when every bosom ought to beat with
none but political sensations.  The ignorance or the stupidity of these
people must be absolutely incredible; not a week passes without their
country abounding with events[38] that are analyzed an debated by the
carpenters and blacksmiths of England." The cause of this inertia is
manifest; interrogated on their opinions, all reply: "We are of the
provinces and we must wait to know what is going on in Paris." Never
having acted, they do no know how to act.  But, thanks to this inertia,
they let themselves be driven.  The provinces form an immense stagnant
pond, which, by a terrible inundation, may be emptied exclusively on
one side, and suddenly; the fault lies with the engineers who failed
to provide it with either dikes or outlets.

Such is the languor or, rather, the prostration, into which local
life falls when the local chiefs deprive it of their presence, action
or sympathy.  I find only three or four grand seigniors taking a part
in it, practical philanthropists following the example of English
noblemen; the Duc d'Harcourt, who settles the lawsuits of his
peasants; the Duc de Larochefoucauld-Liancourt who establishes a model
farm on his domain, and a school of industrial pursuits for the
children of poor soldiers; and the Comte de Brienne, whose thirty
villages are to demand liberty of the Convention.[39] The rest, for
the most part liberals, content themselves with discussions on public
affairs and on political economy.  In fact, the difference in manners,
the separation of interests, the remoteness of ideas are so great that
contact between those most exempt from haughtiness and their immediate
tenantry is rare, and at long intervals.  Arthur Young, needing some
information at the house of the Duc de Larochefoucauld himself, the
steward is sent for.  "At an English nobleman's, there would have been
three or four farmers asked to meet me, who would have dined with the
family amongst the ladies of the first rank.  I do not exaggerate when
I say that I have had this at least an hundred times in the first
houses of our islands.  It is, however, a thing that in the present
style of manners in France would not be met with from Calais to
Bayonne except, by chance, in the house of some great lord that had
been much in England, and then not unless it was asked for.  The
nobility in France have no more idea of practicing agriculture, and
making it a subject of conversation, except on the mere theory, as
they would speak of a loom or a bowsprit, than of any other object the
most remote from their habits and pursuits." Through tradition,
fashion and deliberation, they are, and wish only to be, people of
society; their sole concern is to talk and to hunt.  Never have the
leaders of men so unlearned the art of leading men; the art which
consists of marching along the same pathway with them, but at the
head, and directing their labor by sharing in it.  - Our Englishman,
an eye-witness and competent, again writes: "Thus it is whenever you
stumble on a grand seignior, even one that was worth millions, you are
sure to find his property desert.  Those of the Duc de Bouillon and of
the Prince de Soubise are two of the greatest properties in France;
and all the signs I have yet seen of their greatness are heaths,
moors, deserts, and brackens.  Go to their residence, wherever it may
be, and you would probably find them in the midst of a forest very
well peopled with deer, wild boars and wolves." "The great
proprietors," says another contemporary,[40] "attracted to and kept in
our cities by luxurious enjoyments know nothing of their estates,"
save "of their agents whom they harass for the support of a ruinous
ostentation.  How can ameliorations be looked for from those who even
refuse to keep things up and make indispensable repairs?" A sure proof
that their absence is the cause of the evil is found in the visible
difference between the domain worked under absent abbé-commendatory
and a domain superintended by monks living on the spot "The
intelligent traveler recognizes it" at first sight by the state of
cultivation.  "If he finds fields well enclosed by ditches, carefully
planted, and covered with rich crops, these fields, he says to
himself; belong to the monks.  Almost always, alongside of these
fertile plains, is an area of ground badly tilled and almost barren,
presenting a painful contrast; and yet the soil is the same, being two
portions of the same domain; he sees that the latter is the portion of
the abbé-commendatory." "The abbatial manse." said Lefranc de
Pompignan, "frequently looks like the property of a spendthrift; the
monastic manse is like a patrimony whereon nothing is neglected for
its amelioration," to such an extent that " the two-thirds " which the
abbé enjoys bring him less than the third reserved by his monks.  - The
ruin or impoverishment of agriculture is, again, one of the effects of
absenteeism.  There was, perhaps, one-third of the soil in France,
which, deserted as in Ireland, was as badly tilled, as little
productive as in Ireland in the hands of the rich absentees, the
English bishops, deans and nobles.

Doing nothing for the soil, how could they do anything for men? Now
and then, undoubtedly, especially with farms that pay no rent, the
steward writes a letter, alleging the misery of the farmer.  There is
no doubt, also, that, especially for thirty years back, they desire to
be humane; they descant among themselves about the rights of man; the
sight of the pale face of a hungry peasant would give them pain.  But
they never see him; does it ever occur to them to fancy what it is
like under the awkward and complimentary phrases of their agent?
Moreover, do they know what hunger is? Who amongst them has had any
rural experiences? And how could they picture to themselves the misery
of this forlorn being? They are too remote from him to that, too
ignorant of his mode of life.  The portrait they conceive of him is
imaginary; never was there a falser representation of the peasant;
accordingly the awakening is to be terrible.  They view him as the
amiable swain, gentle, humble and grateful, simple-hearted and right-
minded, easily led, being conceived according to Rousseau and the
idylls performed at this very epoch in all private drawing rooms.[41]
Lacking a knowledge him they overlook him; they read the steward's
letter and immediately the whirl of high life again seizes them and,
after a sigh bestowed on the distress of the poor, they make up their
minds that their income for the year will be short.  A disposition of
this kind is not favorable to charity.  Accordingly, complaints arise,
not against the residents but against the absentees.[42] "The
possessions of the Church, says a letter, serve only to nourish the
passions of their holders." "According to the canons, says another
memorandum, every beneficiary must give a quarter of his income to the
poor; nevertheless in our parish there is a revenue of more than
twelve thousand livres, and none of it is given to the poor unless it
is some small matter at the hands of the curate." "The abbé de Conches
gets one-half of the tithes and contributes nothing to the relief of
the parish." Elsewhere, "the chapter of Ecouis, which owns the
benefice of the tithes is of no advantage to the poor, and only seeks
to augment its income." Nearby, the abbé of Croix-Leufroy, "a heavy
tithe-owner, and the abbé de Bernay, who gets fifty-seven thousand
livres from his benefice, and who is a non-resident, keep all and
scarcely give enough to their officiating curates to keep them alive."
"I have in my parish, says a curate of Berry,[43] six simple benefices
of which the titularies are always absent.  They enjoy together an
income of nine thousand livres; I sent them in writing the most urgent
entreaties during the calamity of the past year; I received from one
them two louis only, and most of them did not even answer me."
Stronger is the reason for a conviction that in ordinary times they
will make no remission of their dues.  Moreover, these dues, the
censives, the lods et ventes, tithes, and the like, are in the hands
of a steward, and he is a good steward who returns a large amount of
money.  He has no right to be generous at his master's expense, and he
is tempted to turn the subjects of his master to his own profit.  In
vain might the soft seignorial hand be disposed to be easy or
paternal; the hard hand of the proxy bears down on the peasants with
all its weight, and the caution of a chief gives place to the
exactions of a clerk.- How is it then when, instead of a clerk on the
domain, a fermier is found, an adjudicator who, for an annual sum,
purchases of seignior the management and product of his dues? In
election of Mayenne,[44] and certainly also in many others, the
principal domains are rented in this way.  Moreover there are a number
of dues, like the tolls, the market-place tax, that on the flock
apart, the monopoly of the oven and of the mill which can scarcely be
managed otherwise; the seignior must necessarily employ an adjudicator
who spares him the disputes and trouble of collecting.[45] This
happens often and the demands and the greed of the contractor, who is
determined to gain or, at least, not to lose, falls on the peasantry:

 "He is a ravenous wolf," says Renauldon, "let loose on the estate.
He draws upon it to the last sou, he crushes the subjects, reduces
them to beggary, forces the cultivators to desert.  The owner, thus
rendered odious, finds himself obliged to tolerate his exactions to
able to profit by them."

 Imagine, if you can, the evil which a country usurer exercises,
armed against them with such burdensome rights; it is the feudal
seigniory in the hands of Harpagon, or rather of old Grandet.  When,
indeed, a tax becomes insupportable we see, by the local complaints,
that it is nearly always a fermier who enforces it.[46] It is one of
these, acting for a body of canons, who claims Jeanne Mermet's
paternal inheritance on the pretense that she had passed her wedding
night at her husband's house.  One can barely find similar exactions in
the Ireland of 1830, on those estates where, the farmer-general
renting to sub-farmers and the latter to others still below them.  The
poor tenant at the foot of the ladder himself bore the full weight of
it, so much the more crushed because his creditor, crushed himself
measured the requirements he exacted by those he had to submit to.

Suppose that, seeing this abuse of his name, the seignior is
desirous of withdrawing the administration of his domains from these
mercenary hands.  In most cases he is unable to do it: he too deeply in
debt, having appropriated to his creditors a certain portion of his
land, a certain branch of his income.  For centuries, the nobles are
involved through their luxury, their prodigality, their carelessness,
and through that false sense of honor, which consists in looking upon
attention to accounts as the occupation of an accountant.  They take
pride in their negligence, regarding it, as they say, living
nobly.[47] "Monsieur the archbishop," said Louis XVI.  to M. de Dillon,
." they say that you are in debt, and even largely." "Sire," replied
the prelate, with the irony of a grand seignior, "I will ask my
intendant and inform Your Majesty." Marshal de Soubise has five
hundred thousand livres income, which is not sufficient for him.  We
know the debts of the Cardinal de Rohan and of the Comte Artois;[48]
their millions of income were vainly thrown into this gulf.  The Prince
de Guémenée happens to become bankrupt on thirty-five millions.  The
Duke of Orleans, the richest proprietor in the kingdom, owed at his
death seventy-four millions.  When became necessary to pay the
creditors of the emigrants out of the proceeds of their possessions,
it was proved that most of the large fortunes were eaten up with
mortgages.[49] Readers of the various memoirs know that, for two
hundred years, the deficiencies bad to be supplied by marriages for
money and by the favors of the king.  - This explains why, following
the king's example, the nobles converted everything into money, and
especially the places at their disposition, and, in relaxing authority
for profit, why they alienated the last fragment of government
remaining in their hands.  Everywhere they thus laid aside the
venerated character of a chief to put on the odious character of a
trafficker.  "Not only," says a contemporary,[50] "do they give no pay
to their officers of justice, or take them at a discount, but, what is
worse, the greater portion of them make a sale of these offices." In
spite of the edict of 1693, the judges thus appointed take no steps to
be admitted into the royal courts and they take no oaths.  "What is the
result? Justice, too often administered by knaves, degenerates into
brigandage or into a frightful impunity."  - Ordinarily the seignior
who sells the office on a financial basis, deducts, in addition, the
hundredth, the fiftieth, the tenth of the price, when it passes into
other hands; and at other times he disposes of the survivorship.  He
creates these offices and survivorships purposely to sell them.  "All
the seigniorial courts, say the registers, are infested with a crowd
of officials of every description, seigniorial sergeants, mounted and
unmounted officers, keepers of the provostship of the funds, guards of
the constabulary.  It is by no means rare to find as many as ten in an
arrondissement which could hardly maintain two if they confined
themselves within the limits of their duties." Also "they are at the
same time judges, attorneys, fiscal-attorneys, registrars, notaries,"
each in a different place, each practicing in several seigniories
under various titles, all perambulating, all in league like thieves at
a fair, and assembling together in the taverns to plan, prosecute and
decide.  Sometimes the seignior, to economize, confers the title on one
of his own dependents: "At Hautemont, in Hainaut, the fiscal-attorney
is a domestic." More frequently he nominates some starveling advocate
of a petty village in the neighborhood on wages which would not
suffice to keep him alive a week." He indemnifies himself out of the
peasants.  Processes of chicanery, delays and willful complications in
the proceedings, sittings at three livres the hour for the advocate
and three livres the hour for the bailiff.  The black brood of judicial
leeches suck so much the more eagerly, because the more numerous, a
still more scrawny prey, having paid for the privilege of sucking
it.[51] The arbitrariness, the corruption, the laxity of such a régime
can be divined.  "Impunity," says Renauldon, "is nowhere greater than
in the seigniorial tribunals .  .  .  .  The foulest crimes obtain no
consideration there," for the seignior dreads supplying the means for
a criminal trial, while his judges or prosecuting attorneys fear that
they will not be paid for their proceedings.  Moreover, his jail is
often a cellar under the chateau; "there is not one tribunal out of a
hundred in conformity with the law in respect of prisons;" their
keepers shut their eyes or stretch out their hands.  Hence it is that
"his estates become the refuge of all the scoundrels in the canton."
The effect of his indifference is terrible and it is to react against
him: to-morrow, at the club, the attorneys whom he has multiplied will
demand his head, and the bandits whom he has tolerated will place it
on the end of a pike.

One-point remains, the chase, wherein the noble's jurisdiction is
still active and severe, and it is just the point which is found the
most offensive.  Formerly, when one-half of the canton consisted of
forest, or waste land, while the other half was being ravaged by wild
beasts, he was justified in reserving the right to hunt them; it
entered into his function as local captain.  He was the hereditary
gendarme, always armed, always on horseback, as well against wild
boars and wolves as against rovers and brigands.  Now that nothing is
left to him of the gendarme but the title and the epaulettes he
maintains his privilege through tradition, thus converting a service
into an annoyance.  Hunt he must, and he alone must hunt; it is a
physical necessity and, it the same time, a sign of his blood.  A
Rohan, a Dillon, chases the stag although belonging to the church, in
spite of edicts and in spite of the canons.  "You hunt too much," said
Louis XV.[52] to the latter; "I know something about it.  How can you
prohibit your curates from hunting if you pass your life in setting
them such an example? - Sire, for my curates the chase is a fault, for
myself it is the fault of my ancestors." When the vanity and arrogance
of caste thus mounts guard over a right it is with obstinate
vigilance.  Accordingly, their captains of the chase, their game-
keepers, their wood-rangers, their forest-wardens protect brutes as if
they were men, and hunt men as if they were brutes.  In the bailiwick
of Pont-l'Evèque in 1789 four instances are cited "of recent
assassinations committed by the game-keepers of Mme.  d'A----, -Mme.  N-
---, a prelate and a marshal of France, on commoners caught breaking
the game laws or carrying guns.  All four publicly escape punishment."
In Artois, a parish makes declaration that "on the lands of the
Chattellany the game devours all the avêtis (pine saplings) and that
the growers of them will be obliged to abandon their business." Not
far off; at Rumancourt, at Bellone, "the hares, rabbits and partridges
entirely devour them, Count d'Oisy never hunting nor having hunts." In
twenty villages in the neighborhood around Oisy where he hunts it is
on horseback and across the crops.  "His game-keepers, always armed,
have killed several persons under the pretense of watching over their
master's rights.  .  .  .  The game, which greatly exceeds that of the
royal captaincies, consumes annually all prospects of a crop, twenty
thousand razières of wheat and as many of other grains." In the
bailiwick of Evreux "the game has just destroyed everything up to the
very houses.  .  .  .  On account of the game the citizen is not free to
pull up the weeds in summer which clog the grain and injure the seed
sown.  .  .  .  How many women are there without husbands, and children
without fathers, on account of a poor hare or rabbit!" The game-
keepers of the forest of Gouffray in Normandy "are so terrible that
they maltreat, insult and kill men.  .  .  .  I know of farmers who,
having pleaded against the lady to be indemnified for the loss of
their wheat, not only lost their time but their crops and the expenses
of the trial.  .  .  .  Stags and deer are seen roving around our houses
in open daylight." In the bailiwick of Domfront, "the inhabitants of
more than ten parishes are obliged to watch all night for more than
six months of the year to secure their crops.[53] -This is the effect
of tile right of the chase in the provinces.  It is, however, in the
Ile-de-France, where captaincies abound, and become more extensive,
that the spectacle is most lamentable.  A procés-verba1 shows that in
the single parish of Vaux, near Meulan, the rabbits of warrens in the
vicinity ravage eight hundred cultivated arpents (acres) of ground and
destroy the crops of two thousand four hundred setiers (three acres
each), that is to say, the annual supplies of eight hundred persons.
Near that place, at la Rochette, herds of deer and of stags devour
everything in the fields during the day, and, at night, they even
invade the small gardens of the inhabitants to consume vegetables and
to break down young trees.  It is found impossible in a territory
subjected to a captaincy to retain vegetables safe in gardens,
enclosed by high walls.  At Farcy, of five hundred peach trees planted
in a vineyard and browsed on by stags, only twenty remain at the end
of three years.  Over the whole territory of Fontainebleau, the
communities, to save their vines, are obliged to maintain, with the
assent always of the captaincy, a gang of watchmen who, with licensed
dogs, keep watch and make a hubbub all night from the first of May to
the middle of October.  At Chartrettes the deer cross the Seine,
approach the doors of the Comtesse de Larochefoucauld and destroy
entire plantations of poplars.  A domain rented for two thousand livres
brings in only four hundred after the establishment of the captaincy
of Versailles.  In short, eleven regiments of an enemy's cavalry,
quartered on the eleven captaincies near the capital, and starting out
daily to forage, could not do more mischief.  - We need not be
surprised if, in the neighborhood of these lairs, the people become
weary of cultivating.[54] Near Fontainebleau and Melun, at Bois-le-
Roi, three-quarters of the ground remains waste.  Almost all the houses
in Brolle are in ruins, only half-crumbling gables being visible; at
Coutilles and at Chapelle-Rablay, five farms are abandoned; at
Arbonne, numerous fields are neglected.  At Villiers, and at Dame-
Marie, where there were four farming companies and a number of special
cultures, eight hundred arpents remain untilled.  - Strange to say, as
the century becomes more easygoing the enforcement of the chase
becomes increasingly harsh.  The officers of the captaincy are zealous
because they labor under the eye and for the "pleasures" of their
master.  In 1789, eight hundred preserves had just been planted in one
single canton of the captaincy of Fontainebleau, and in spite of the
proprietors of the soil.  According to the regulations of 1762 every
private individual domiciled on the reservation of a captaincy is
forbidden from enclosing his homestead or any ground whatever with
hedges or ditches, or walls without a special permit.[55] In case of a
permit being given he must leave a wide, open and continuous space in
order to let the huntsmen easily pass through.  He is not allowed to
keep any ferret, any fire-arm, any instrument adapted to the chase,
nor to be followed by any dog even if not adapted to it, except the
dog be held by a leash or clog fastened around its neck.  And better
still.  He is forbidden to reap his meadow or his Lucerne before St.
John's day, to enter his own field between the first of May and the
twenty-fourth of June, to visit any island in the Seine, to cut grass
on it or osiers, even if the grass and osiers belong to him.  The
reason is, that now the partridge is hatching and the legislator
protects it; he would take less pains for a woman in confinement; the
old chroniclers would say of him, as with William Rufus, that his
bowels are paternal only for animals.  Now, in France, four hundred
square leagues of territory are subject to the control of the
captaincies,[56] and, over all France, game, large or small, is the
tyrant of the peasant.  We may conclude, or rather listen to the
people's conclusion.  "Every time," says M. Montlosier, in 1789,[57]
"that I chanced to encounter herds of deer or does on my road my
guides immediately shouted: 'Make room for the gentry!' in this way
alluding to the ravages committed by them on their land." Accordingly,
in the eyes of their subjects, they are wild animals.  -  This shows to
what privileges can lead when divorced from duties.  In this manner an
obligation to protect degenerates into a right of devastation.  Thus do
humane and rational beings act, unconsciously, like irrational and
inhuman beings.  Divorced from the people they misuse them; nominal
chiefs, they have unlearned the function of an effective chief; having
lost all public character they abate nothing of their private
advantages.  So much the worse for the canton, and so much worse for
themselves.  The thirty or forty poachers whom they prosecute to day on
their estates will march to-morrow to attack their chateaux at the
head of an insurrection.  The absence of the masters, the apathy of the
provinces, the bad state of cultivation, the exactions of agents, the
corruption of the tribunals, the vexations of the captaincies,
indolence, the indebtedness and exigencies of the seignior, desertion,
misery, the brutality and hostility of vassals, all proceeds from the
same cause and terminates in the same effect.

When sovereignty becomes transformed into a sinecure it becomes
burdensome without being useful, and on becoming burdensome without
being useful it is overthrown.

______________________________________________________________________
Notes:
[1].  Beugnot, "Mémoires," V.  I.  p.292.  - De Tocqueville, "L'Ancien
Régime et la Révolution."

[2].  Arthur Young, "Travels in France," II.  456.  In France, he
says, it is from the eleventh to the thirty-second.  "But nothing is
known like the enormities committed in England where the tenth is
really taken."

[3].  Saint-Simon, "Mémoires," ed.  Chéruel, vol.  I.  - Lucas de
Montigny, "Mémoires de Mirabeau," I.  53-182.  - Marshal Marmont,
"Mémoires," I.  9, 11.  - Châteaubriand, "Mémoires," I.  17.  De
Montlosier, "Mémoires," 2 vol.  passim.  - Mme.  de Larochejacquelein,
"Souvenirs," passim.  Many details concerning the types of the old
nobility will be found in these passages.  They are truly and forcibly
depicted in two novels by Balzac in "Beatrix," (the Baron de Guénic)
and in the "Cabinet des Antiques," (the Marquis d' Esgrignon).

[4].  A letter of the bailiff of Mirabeau, 1760, published by M. de
Loménie in the "Correspondant," V.  49, p.132.

[5].  Mme.  de Larochejacquelein, ibid.  I.  84.  "As M. de Marigny had
some knowledge of the veterinary art the peasants of the canton came
after him when they had sick animals."

[6].  Marquis de Mirabeau, "Traité de la Population," p.  57.

[7].  De Tocqueville, ibid.  p.180.  This is proved by the registers
of the capitation-tax which was paid at the actual domicile.

[8].  Renauldon, ibid.., Preface p.  5.  - Anne Plumptre, "A narrative
of three years residence in France from 1802 to 1805." II.  357.  --
Baroness Oberkirk, "Mémoires," II.  389.  - "De l'état religieux," by
the abbés Bonnefoi and Bernard, 1784, p.  295.  - Mme.Vigée-Lébrun,
"Souvenirs," p.171.

[9].  Archives nationales, D, XIX.  portfolios 14, 15, 25.  Five
bundles of papers are filled with these petitions.

[10].  Ibid.  D, XIX.  portfolio 11.  An admirable letter by Joseph of
Saintignon, abbé of Domiévre, general of the regular canons of Saint-
Sauveur and a resident.  He has 23,000 livres income, of which 6,066
livres is a pension from the government, in recompense for his
services.  His personal expenditure not being over 5,000 livres "he is
in a situation to distribute among the poor and the workmen, in the
space of eleven years, more than 250,000 livres."

[11].  On the conduct and sentiments of lay and ecclesiastical
seigniors cf.  Léonce de Lavergne, "Les Assemblées provinciales," I
vol.  Legrand, "L'intendance du Hainaut," I vol.  Hippeau, "Le
Gouvernement de Normandie," 9 vols.

[12].  "The most active sympathy filled their breasts; that which an
opulent man most dreaded was to be regarded as insensible."
(Lacretelle, vol.  V.  p.  2.)

[13].  Floquet, "Histoire du Parlement de Normandie," vol.  VI.
p.696.  In 1772 twenty-five gentlemen and imprisoned or exiled for
having signed a protest against the orders of the court.

[14].  De Tocqueville, ibid.  pp.  39, 56, 75, 119, 184.  He has
developed this point with admirable force and insight.

[15].  De Tocqueville, ibid.  p.376.  Complaints of the provincial
assembly of Haute-Guyenne.  "People complain daily that there is no
police in the rural districts.  How could there be one? The nobles
takes no interest in anything, excepting a few just and benevolent
seigniors who take advantage of their influence with vassals to
prevent affrays."

[16].  Records of the States-General of 1789.  Many of the registers
of the noblesse consist of the requests by nobles, men and women, of
some honorary distinctive mark, for instance a cross or a ribbon which
will make them recognizable.

[17].  De Boullé, "Mémoires," p.50.  - De Toqueville, ibid..  pp.  118,
119.  - De Loménie, "Les Mirabeau, " p.  132.  A letter of the bailiff of
Mirabeau, 1760.  - De Châteaubriand, Mémoires," I.  14, 15, 29, 76, 80,
125.  - Lucas de Montigny, "Mémoires de Mirabeau," I.  160.  - Reports of
the Société du Berry.  "Bourges en 1753 et 1754," according to a diary
(in the national archives), written by one of the exiled
parliamentarians, p.  273.

[18].  "La vie de mon père," by Rétif de la Bretonne, I.  146.

[19].  The rule is analogous with the other coutumes (common-law
rules), of other places and especially in Paris.  (Renauldon, ibid..  p.
134.)

[20].  A sort of dower right.  TR.

[21].  Mme.  d'Oberkirk, "Mémoires," I.  395.

[22].  De Bouillé, "Mémoires," p.  50.  According to him, "all the
noble old families, excepting two or three hundred, were ruined.  A
larger portion of the great titled estates had become the appanage of
financiers, merchants and their descendants.  The fiefs, for the most
part, were in the hands of the bourgeoisie of the towns." - Léonce de
Lavergne, "Economie rurale en France," p.  26.  "The greatest number
vegetated in poverty in small country fiefs often not worth more than
2,000 or 3,000 francs a year." - In the apportionment of the indemnity
in 1825, many received less than 1,000 francs.  The greater number of
indemnities do not exceed 50,000 francs.  - "The throne," says
Mirabeau, "is surrounded only by ruined nobles."

[23].  De Bouillé, "Memoires," p.  50.  - Cherin, "Abrégé
chronologique des édits" (1788).  "Of this innumerable multitude
composing the privileged order scarcely a twentieth part of it can
really pretend to nobility of an immemorial and ancient date." - 4,070
financial, administrative, and judicial offices conferred nobility.  -
Turgot, "Collection des Economistes," II.  276.  "Through the facilities
for acquiring nobility by means of money there is no rich man who does
not at once become noble." - D'Argenson, "Mémoires," III.  402.

[24].  Necker, "De l'Administration des Finances," II.  271.  Legrand,
"L'Intendance de Hainaut," pp.  104, 118, 152, 412.

[25].  Even after the exchange of 1784, the prince retains for
himself "all personal impositions as well as subventions on the
inhabitants," except a sum of 6,000 livres for roads.  Archives
Nationales, G, 192, a memorandum of April 14th, 1781, on the state of
things in the Clermontois.  - Report of the provincial assembly of the
Three Bishoprics (1787), p.  380.

[26].  The town of St.  Amand, alone, contains to day 10,210
inhabitants.

[27].  See note 3 at the end of the volume.

[28].  De Ferrières, "Mémoires," II.  57: "All had 100,000 some 200,
300, and even 800,000."

[29].  De Tocqueville, ibid..  book 2, Chap.  2.  p.182.  - Letter of
the bailiff of Mirabau, August 23, 1770.  "This feudal order was merely
vigorous, even though they have pronounced it barbarous, because
France, which once had the vices of strength, now has only those of
feebleness, and because the flock which was formerly devoured by
wolves is now eaten up with lice.  .  .  .  Three or four kicks or blows
with a stick were not half so injurious to a poor man's family, nor to
himself, as being devoured by six rolls of handwriting." - "The
nobility," says St.  Simon, in his day, "has become another people with
no choice left it but to crouch down in mortal and ruinous indolence,
which renders it a burden and contemptible, or to go and be killed in
warfare; subject to the insults of clerks, secretaries of the state
and the secretaries of intendants." Such are the complaints of feudal
spirits.  - The details which follow are all derived from Saint Simon,
Dangeau, de Luynes, d'Argenson and other court historians.

[30].  Works of Louis XIV.  and his own words.  - Mme Vigée-Lebrun,
"Souvenirs," I.71: "I have seen the queen (Marie Antoinette), obliging
Madame to dine, then six years of age, with a little peasant girl whom
she was taking care of, and insisting that this little one should he
served first, saying to her daughter: 'You must do the honors.' "
(Madame is the title given to the king's oldest daughter.  SR.)

[31].  Molière, "Misanthrope." This is the "desert" in which
Célimène refuses to he buried with Alceste.  See also in "Tartuffe" the
picture which Dorine draws of a small town.- Arthur Young," Voyages en
France," I.  78.

[32].  'Traité de la Population," p.  108, (1756).

[33].  I have this from old people who witnessed it before 1789.

[34].  "Mémoires" de M. de Montlosier," I.  p.  161,.

[35].  Reports of the Société de Berry, "Bourges en 1753 et 1754,"
p.  273.

[36].  Ibid..  p.  271.  One day the cardinal, showing his guests over
his palace just completed, led them to the bottom of a corridor where
he had placed water closets, at that time a novelty.  M. Boutin de la
Coulommière, the son of a receiver-general of the finances, made an
exclamation at the sight of the ingenious mechanism which it pleased
him to see moving, and, turning towards the abbé de Canillac, he says:
"That is really admirable, but what seems to me still more admirable
is that His Eminence, being above all human weakness, should
condescend to make use of it." This anecdote is valuable, as it serves
to illustrate the rank and position of a grand-seignior prelate in the
provinces.

[37].  Arthur Young, V.II.  P.230 and the following pages.

[38].  Abolition of the tithe, the feudal rights, the permission to
kill the game, etc.

[39].  De Loménie, "Les Mirabeau," p.134.  A letter of the bailiff,
September 25, 1760: "I am at Harcourt, where I admire the master's
honest, benevolent greatness.  You cannot imagine my pleasure on fête
days at seeing the people everywhere around the château, and the good
little peasant boys and girls looking right in the face of their good
landlord and almost pulling his watch off to examine the trinkets on
the chain, and all with a fraternal air; without familiarity.  The good
duke does not make his vassals to go to court; he listens to them and
decides for them, humoring them with admirable patience." Lacretelle,
"Dix ans d'épreuve," p.  58.

[40].  "De l'état religieux," by the abbés de Bonnefoi et Bernard,
1784, I.  pp.  287, 291.

[41].  See on this subject "La partie de chasse de Henri IV" by
Collé.  Cf.  Berquin, Florian, Marmontel, etc, and likewise the
engravings of that day.

[42].  Boivin-Champeaux, "Notice historique sue la Révolution dans
le département de l'Eure," p.  63, 61.

[43].  Archives nationales, Reports of the States-General of 1789,
T, XXXIX., p.  111.  Letter of the 6th March, 1789, from the curate of
St.  Pierre de Ponsigny, in Berry.  D'Argenson, 6th July, 1756.  "The
late cardinal de Soubise had three millions in cash and he gave
nothing to the poor."

[44].  De Tocqueville, ibid..  405.  - Renauldon, ibid..  628.

[45].  The example is set by the king who sells to the farmer-
generals, for an annual sum, the management and product of the
principal indirect taxes.

[46].  Voltaire, "Politique et Législation, La voix du Curé," (in
relation to the serfs of St.  Claude).  - A speech of the Duke
d'Aiguillon, August 4th, 1789, in the National Assembly: "The
proprietors of fiefs, of seigniorial estates, are rarely guilty of the
excesses of which their vassals complain; but their agents are often
pitiless."

[47].  Beugnot.  "Mémoires," V.  I.  p.136.  - Duc de Lévis, "Souvenirs
et portraits," p.  156.  - "Moniteur," the session of November 22,
1872, M. Bocher says: "According to the statement drawn up by order of
the Convention the Duke of Orleans's fortune consisted of 74,000,000
of indebtedness and 140,000,000 of assets." On the 8th January, 1792,
he had assigned to his creditors 38,000,000 to obtain his discharge.

[48].  King Louis the XVI's brother.  (SR.)

[49].  In 1785, the Duke de Choiseul In his testament estimated his
property at fourteen millions and his debts at ten millions.  (Comte de
Tilly, "Mémoires," II.  215.)

[50].  Renauldon, ibid..  45, 52, 628.  - Duvergier, "Collection des
Lois," II.  391; law of August 31; - October 18, 1792.  - Statements
(cahier) of grievances of a magistrate of the Chatelet on seigniorial
courts (1789), p.  29.  -  Legrand, " l'Intendance du Hainaut," p.119.


[51].  Archives Nationales, H, 654 ("Mémoire" by René de Hauteville,
advocate to the Parliament, Saint-Brieuc, October 5, 1776.) In
Brittany the number of seigniorial courts is immense, the pleaders
being obliged to pass through four or five jurisdictions before
reaching the Parliament.  "Where is justice rendered? In the cabaret,
in the tavern, where, amidst drunkards and riff-raff, the judge sells
justice to whoever pays the most for it."

[52].  Beugnot, "Mémoires," vol.  I.  p.  35.

[53].  Boivin-Champeaux, ibid..  48.  - Renauldon, 26, 416.  -
Manuscript reports of the States-general (Archives nationales), t.
CXXXII.  pp.  896 and 901.  -  Hippeau, "Le Gouvernement de Normandie,"
VII.  61, 74.  - Paris, "La Jeunesse de Robespierre," pp.314-324.  -
"Essai sur les capitaineries royales et autres," (1789) passim.  - De
Loménie, "Beaumarchais et son emps," I.  125.  Beaumarchais having
purchased the office of lieutenant-general of the chase in the
bailiwicks of the Louvre warren (twelve to fifteen leagues in
circumference.  approx.  60 km.  SR.) tries delinquents under this title.
July 15th, 1766, he sentences Ragondet, a farmer to a fine of one
hundred livres together with the demolition of the walls around an
enclosure, also of his shed newly built without license, as tending to
restrict the pleasures of the king.

[54].  Marquis D'Argenson, "Mémoires," ed.  Rathery, January 27,
1757.  "The sieur de Montmorin, captain of the game-preserves of
Fontainebleau, derives from his office enormous sums, and behaves
himself like a bandit.  The population of more than a hundred villages
around no longer sow their land, the fruits and grain being eaten by
deer; stags and other game.  They keep only a few vines, which they
preserve six months of the year by mounting guard day and night with
drums, making a general turmoil to frighten off the destructive
animals."  January 23, 1753.  - " M. le Prince de Conti has established
a captainry of eleven leagues around Ile-Adam and where everybody is
vexed at it."  September 23, 1753.  - M. le Duc d'Orléans came to
Villers-Cotterets, he has revived the captainry; there are more than
sixty places for sale on account of these princely annoyances.

[55].  The old peasants with whom I once have talked still had a
clear memory of these annoyances and damages.  - They recounted how, in
the country around Clermont, the gamekeepers of Prince de Condé in the
springtime took litters of wolves and raised them in the dry moats of
the chateau.  They were freed in the beginning of the winter, and the
wolf hunting team would then hunt them later.  But they ate the sheep,
and, here and there, a child.

[56].  The estates of the king encompassed in forest one million
acres, not counting forests in the appanages set aside for his eldest
son or for factories or salt works.

[57].  De Montlosier, "Mémoires," I.  175.







CHAPTER IV.  PUBLIC SERVICES DUE BY THE PRIVILEGED CLASSES.

I.  England compared to France.

An English example.  - The Privileged class renders no service in
France.  - The influence and rights which remain to them.  - They use it
only for themselves.

USELESS in the canton, they might have been useful at the Center of
the State, and, without taking part in the local government, they
might have served in the general government.  Thus does a lord, a
baronet, a squire act in England, even when not a "justice" of his
county or a committee-man in his parish.  Elected a member of the Lower
House, a hereditary member of the upper house, he holds the strings of
the public purse and prevents the sovereign from spending too freely.
Such is the régime in countries where the feudal seigniors, instead of
allowing the sovereign to ally himself with the people against them,
allied themselves with the people against the sovereign.  To protect
their own interests better they secured protection for the interests
of others, and, after having served as the representatives of their
compeers they became the representatives of the nation.  Nothing of
this kind takes place in France.  The States-General are fallen into
desuetude, and the king may with truth declare himself the sole
representative of the country.  Like trees rendered  lifeless under the
shadow of a gigantic oak, other public powers perish through his
growth; whatever still remains of these encumbers the ground, and
forms around him a circle of clambering briers or of decaying trunks.
One of them, the Parliament, an offshoot simply of the great oak,
sometimes imagined itself in possession of a root of its own; but its
sap was too evidently derivative for it to stand by itself and provide
the people with an independent shelter.  Other bodies, surviving,
although stunted, the assembly of the clergy and the provincial
assemblies, still protect an order, and four or five provinces; but
this protection extends only to the order itself or to the province,
and, if it protects a special interest it is commonly at the expense
of the general interest.

II.  The Clergy

Assemblies of the clergy.  - They serve only ecclesiastical
interests.  - The clergy exempted from taxation.  - Solicitation of its
agents.  - Its zeal against the Protestants.

   Let us observe the most vigorous and the best-rooted of these
bodies, the assembly of the clergy.  It meets every five years, and,
during the interval, two agents, selected by it, watch over the
interests of the order.  Convoked by the government, subject to its
guidance, retained or dismissed when necessary, always in its hands,
used by it for political ends, it nevertheless continues to be a
refuge for the clergy, which it represents.  But it is an asylum solely
for that body, and, in the series of transactions by which it defends
itself against fiscal demands, it eases its own shoulders of the load
only to make it heavier on the shoulders of others.  We have seen how
its diplomacy saved clerical immunities, how it bought off the body
from the poll-tax and the vingtièmes, how it converted its portion of
taxation into a "free gift," how this gift is annually applied to
refunding the capital which it has borrowed to obtain this exemption,
by which delicate art it succeeds, not only in not contributing to the
treasury, but in withdrawing from it every year about 1,500,000
livres, all of which is so much the better for the church but so much
the worse for the people.  Now run through the file of folios in which
from one period of five years to another the reports of its agents
follow each other, - so many clever men thus preparing themselves for
the highest positions in the church, the abbés de Boisgelin, de
Périgord, de Barral, de Montesquiou; at each moment, owing to their
solicitations with judges and the council, owing to the authority
which the discontent of the powerful   order felt to be behind them
gives to their complaints, some ecclesiastic matter is decided in an
ecclesiastical sense; so feudal right is maintained in favor of a
chapter or of a bishop; some public demand is thrown out.[1]  In 1781,
notwithstanding decision of the Parliament of Rennes, the canons of
St.  Malo are sustained in their monopoly of the district baking oven.
This is to the detriment of the bakers who prefer to bake at their own
domiciles as well as of the inhabitants who would have to pay less for
bread made by the bakers.  In 1773, Guénin, a schoolmaster, discharged
by the bishop of Langres, and supported in vain by inhabitants, is
compelled to hand his place over to a successor appointed by the
bishop.  In 1770, Rastel, a Protestant, having opened a public school
at Saint-Affrique, is prosecuted at the demand of the bishop and of
clerical agents; his school is closed and he is imprisoned.  When an
organized body keeps purse strings in its own hands it secures many
favors; these are the equivalent for the money it grants.  The
commanding tone of the king and the submissive air of the clergy
effect no fun mental change; with both of them it is a bargain,[2]
giving and taking on both sides, this or that law against the
Protestants going for one or two millions added to the free gift.  In
this way the revocation of the Edict of Nantes is gradually brought
about, article by article, one turn of the rack after another turn,
each fresh persecution purchased by a fresh largess, the clergy
helping the State on condition that the State becomes an executioner.
Throughout the eighteenth century the church sees that this operation
continues.[3]  In 1717, an assemblage of seventy-four persons having
been surprised at Andure the men are sent to the galleys and the women
are imprisoned.  In 1724, an edict declares that all who are present at
any meeting, or who shall have any intercourse, direct or indirect,
with preachers, shall be condemned to the confiscation of their
property, the women to have their heads shaved and be shut up for
life, and the men to sent to the galleys for life.  In 1745 and 1746,
in Dauphiny, 277 Protestants are condemned to the galleys, and numbers
of women are whipped.  Between 1744 and 1752, in the east and in the
south, six hundred Protestants are imprisoned and eight hundred
condemned to various penalties.  In 1774, the two children of Roux, a
Calvinist of Nimes, are carried off.  Up to nearly the beginning of the
Revolution, in Languedoc, ministers are hung, while dragoons are
dispatched against congregations assembled to worship God in deserted
places.  The mother of M. Guizot here received shots in the skirts of
her dress.  This is owing to the fact that, in Languedoc, through the
provincial States-Assembly "the bishops control temporal affairs more
than elsewhere, their disposition being always to dragoon and make
converts at the point of the bayonet." In 1775, at the coronation of
the king, archbishop Loménie of Brienne, a well-known unbeliever,
addresses the young king: "You will disapprove of the culpable systems
of toleration...  Complete the work undertaken by Louis the Great.  To
you is reserved the privilege of giving the final blow to Calvinism in
your kingdom." In 1780, the assembly of the clergy declares "that the
altar and the throne would equally be in danger if heresy were allowed
to throw off its shackles." Even in 1789, the clergy in its registers,
while consenting to the toleration of non-Catholics, finds the edict
of 1788 too liberal.  They desire that non-Catholics should be excluded
from judicial offices, that they should never be allowed to worship in
public, and that mixed marriages should be forbidden.  And much more
than this; they demand preliminary censure of all works sold by the
bookshops, an ecclesiastical committee to act as informers, and
ignominious punishment to be awarded to the authors of irreligious
books.  Lastly they claim for their body the direction of public
schools and the oversight of private schools.  - There is nothing
strange in this intolerance and selfishness.  A collective body, as
with an individual, thinks of itself first of all and above all.  If,
now and then, it sacrifices some one of its privileges it is for the
purpose of securing the alliance of some other body.  In that case,
which is that of England, all these privileges, which compound with
each other and afford each other mutual support, form, through their
combination, the public liberties.  - In this case, only one body
being represented, its deputies are neither directed nor tempted to
make concession to others; the interest of the body is their sole
guide; they subordinate the common interest to it and serve it at any
cost, even to criminal attacks on the public welfare.



III.  Influence of the Nobles..

Regulations in their favor.  - Preferment obtained by them in the
Church.  - Distribution of bishoprics and abbeys.  - Preferment obtained
from them from the State.  - Governments, offices, sinecures, pensions,
gratuities.  - Instead of being useful they are an expense.

  Thus do public bodies work when, instead of being associated
together, they are separate.  The same spectacle is apparent on
contemplating castes and associations; their isolation is the cause of
their egoism.  From the top to the bottom of the scale the legal and
moral powers which should represent the nation represent themselves
only, while each one is busy in its own behalf at the expense of the
nation.  The nobility, in default of the right to meet together and to
vote, exercises its influence, and, to know how it uses this, it is
sufficient to read over the edicts and the Almanac.  A regulation
imposed on Marshal de Ségur[4]has just restored the old barrier, which
excluded commoners from military rank, and thenceforward, to be a
captain, it is necessary to prove four degrees of nobility.  In like
manner, in late days, one must be a noble to be a master of requests,
and it is secretly determined that in future "all ecclesiastical
property, from the humblest priory to the richest abbeys, shall be
reserved to the nobility." In fact, all the high places, ecclesiastic
or laic, are theirs; all the sinecures, ecclesiastic or laic, are
theirs, or for their relations, adherents, protégés, and servitors.
France[5]  is like a vast stable in which the blood-horses obtain
double and triple rations for doing nothing, or for only half-work,
whilst the draft-horses perform full service on half a ration, and
that often not supplied.  Again, it must be noted, that among these
blood-horses is a privileged circle which, born near the manger, keeps
its fellows away and feeds bountifully, fat, shining, with their skins
polished, and up to their bellies in litter, and with no other
occupation than that of appropriating everything to themselves.  These
are the court nobles, who live within reach of favors, brought up from
infancy to ask for them, to obtain and to ask again, solely attentive
to royal condescension and frowns, for whom the OEil de boeuf[6]
forms the universe.  They are as "indifferent to the affairs of the
State as to their own affairs, allowing one to be governed by
provincial intendants as they allowed he other to be governed by their
own intendants."

Let us contemplate them at work on the budget.  We know how large
that of the church is; I estimate that they absorb at east one-half of
it.  Nineteen chapters of male nobles, twenty-five chapters of female
nobles, two hundred and sixty commanderies of Malta belong to them by
institution.  They occupy, by favor, all the archbishoprics, and,
except five, all the bishoprics.[7]  They furnish three out of four
abbés-commendatory and vicars-general.  If, among the abbeys of females
royally nominated, we set apart those bringing in twenty thousand
livres and more, we find that they all have ladies of rank for
abbesses.  One fact alone shows the extent of these favors: I have
counted eighty-three abbeys of men possessed by the almoners,
chaplains, preceptors or readers to the king, queen, princes, and
princesses; one of them, the abbé de Vermont, has 80,000 livres income
in benefices.  In short, the fifteen hundred ecclesiastical sinecures
under royal appointment, large or small, constitute a flow of money
for the service of the great, whether they pour it out in golden rain
to recompense the assiduity of their intimates and followers, or keep
it in large reservoirs to maintain the dignity of their rank.  Besides,
according to the fashion of giving more to those who have already
enough, the richest prelates possess, above their episcopal revenues,
the wealthiest abbeys.  According to the Almanac, M. d'Argentré, bishop
of Séez,[8] thus enjoys an extra income of 34,000 livres; M. de
Suffren, bishop of Sisteron, 36,000; M. de Girac, bishop of Rennes,
40,000; M. de Bourdeille, bishop of Soissons, 42,000; M. d'Agout de
Bonneval, bishop of Pamiers, 45,000; M. de Marboeuf bishop of Autun,
50,000; M. de Rohan, bishop of Strasbourg, 60,000; M. de Cicé,
archbishop of Bordeaux, 63,000; M. de Luynes, archbishop of Sens,
82,000; M. de Bernis, archbishop of Alby, 100,000; M. de Brienne,
archbishop of Toulouse, l06,000; M. de Dillon, archbishop of Narbonne,
120,000; M. de Larochefoucauld, archbishop of Rouen, 130,000 ; that is
to say, double and sometimes triple the sums stated, and quadruple,
and often six times as much, according to the present standard.  M. de
Rohan derived from his abbeys, not 60,000 livres but 400,000, and M.
de Brienne, the most opulent of all, next to M. de Rohan, the 24th of
August, 1788, at the time of leaving the ministry,[9]  sent to
withdraw from the treasury "the 20,000 livres of his month's salary
which had not yet fallen due, a punctuality the more remarkable that,
without taking into account the salary of his place, with the 6,000
livres pension attached to his blue ribbon, he possessed, in
benefices, 678,000 livres income, and that, still quite recently, a
cutting of wood on one of his abbey domains yielded him a million."

Let us pass on to the lay budget; here also are prolific sinecures,
and almost all belong to the nobles.  Of this class there are in the
provinces the thirty-seven great governments-general, the seven small
governments-general, the sixty-six lieutenancies-general, the four
hundred and seven special governments, the thirteen governorships of
royal palaces, and a number of others, all of them for ostentation and
empty honors.  They are all in the hands of the nobles, all lucrative,
not only through salaries paid by the treasury, but also through local
profits.  Here, again, the nobility allowed itself to evade the
authority, the activity and the usefulness of its charge on the
condition of retaining its title, pomp and money.[10] The intendant is
really the governor; "the titular governor, exercising a function with
special letters of command," is only there to give dinners; and again
he must have permission to do that, "the permission to go and reside
at his place of government." The place, however, yields fruit.  The
government-general of Berry is worth 35,000 livres income, that of
Guyenne 120,000, that of Languedoc 160,000; a small special
government, like that of Havre, brings in 35,000 livres, besides the
accessories; a medium lieutenancy-general, like that of Roussillon,
13,000 to 14,000 livres; one special government from 12,000 to 18,000
livres; and observe that, in the Isle of France alone, there are
thirty-four, at Vervins, Senlis, Melun, Fontainebleau, Dourdan, Sens,
Limours, Etampes, Dreux, Houdan and other towns as insignificant as
they are pacific; it is the staff of the Valois dynasty which, since
the time of Richelieu, has ceased to perform any service, but which
the treasury continues to pay.  -  Consider these sinecures in one
province alone, in Languedoc, a country with its own provincial
assembly, which ought to provide some protection the taxpayer's purse.
There are three sub-commandants at Tournon, Alais, and Montpelier,
"each one paid 16,000 livres, although without any functions since
their places were established at the time of the religious wars and
troubles, to keep down the Protestants." Twelve royal lieutenants are
equally useless, and only for parade.  The same with three lieutenants-
general, each one "receiving in his turn, every three years, a
gratuity of 30,000 livres, for services rendered in the said province.
These are vain and chimerical, they are not specified" because none of
them reside there, and, if they are paid, it is to secure their
support at the court.  "Thus the Comte de Caraman, who has more than
600,000 livres income as proprietor of the Languedoc canal, receives
30,000 livres every three years, without legitimate cause, and
independently of frequent and ample gifts which the province awards to
him for repairs on his canal."  -  The province likewise gives to the
commandant, Comte de Périgord, a gratuity of 12,000 livres in addition
to his salary, and to his wife another gratuity of 12,000 livres on
her honoring the states for the first time with her presence.  It
again pays, for the same commandant, forty guards, "of which twenty-
four only serve during his short appearance at the Assembly," and who,
with their captain, annually cost 15,000 livres.  It pays likewise for
the Governor from eighty to one hundred guards, " who each receive 300
or 400 livres, besides many exemptions, and who are never on service,
since the Governor is a non-resident." The expense of these lazy
subalterns is about 24,000 livres, besides 5,000 to 6,000 for their
captain, to which must be added 7,500 for gubernatorial secretaries,
besides 60,000 livres salaries, and untold profits for the Governor
himself.  I find everywhere secondary idlers swarming in the shadow of
idlers in chief,[11]  and deriving their vigor from the public purse
which is the common nurse.  All these people parade and drink and eat
copiously, in grand style; it is their principal service, and they
attend to it conscientiously.  The sessions of the Assembly are
junketings of six weeks' duration, in which the intendant expends
25,000 livres in dinners and receptions.[12]

Equally lucrative and useless are the court offices[13], so many
domestic sinecures, the profits and accessories of which largely
exceed the emoluments.  I find in the printed register 295 cooks,
without counting the table-waiters of the king and his people, while
"the head butler obtains 84,000 livres a year in billets and
supplies," without counting his salary and the "grand liveries" which
he receives in money.  The head chambermaids to the queen, inscribed in
the Almanac for 150 livres and paid 12,000 francs, make in reality
50,000 francs by the sale of the candles lighted during the day.
Augeard, private secretary, and whose place is set down at 900 livres
a year, confesses that it is worth to him 200,000.  The head huntsman
at Fontainebleau sells for his own benefit each year 20,000 francs
worth of rabbits.  "On each journey to the king's country residences
the ladies of the bedchamber gain eighty per cent on the expenses of
moving; it is said that the coffee and bread for each of these ladies
costs 2,000 francs a year, and so on with other things." "Mme.  de
Tallard made 115,000 livres income out of her place of governess to
the children of France, because her salary was increased 35,000 livres
for each child." The Duc de Penthièvre, as grand admiral, received an
anchorage due on all vessels "entering the ports and rivers of
France," which produced annually 91,484 francs.  Mme.  de Lamballe,
superintendent of the queen's household, inscribed for 6,000 francs,
gets 50,000.[14]  The Duc de Gèvres gets 50,000 crowns[15] by one show
of fireworks out of the fragments and scaffolding which belong to him
by virtue of his office.[16]  -  Grand officers of the palace,
governors of royal establishments, captains of captaincies,
chamberlains, equerries, gentlemen in waiting, gentlemen in ordinary,
pages, governors, almoners, chaplains, ladies of honor, ladies of the
bedchamber, ladies in waiting on the King, the Queen, on Monsieur, on
Madame, on the Comte D'Artois, on the Comtesse D'Artois, on Mesdames,
on Madame Royale, on Madame Elisabeth, in each princely establishment
and elsewhere, hundreds of places provided with salaries and
accessories are without any service to perform, or simply answer a
decorative purpose.  "Mme.  de Laborde has just been appointed keeper of
the queen's bed, with 12,000 francs pension out of the king's privy
purse; nothing is known of the duties of this position, as there has
been no place of this kind since Anne of Austria." The eldest son of
M. de Machault is appointed intendant of the classes.  "This is one of
the employments called complimentary: it is worth 18,000 livres income
to sign one's name twice a year." And likewise with the post of
secretary-general of the Swiss guards, worth 30,000 livres a year and
assigned to the Abbé Barthélemy; and the same with the post of
secretary-general of the dragoons, worth 20,000 livres a year, held in
turn by Gentil Bernard and by Laujon, two small pocket poets.?  -  It
would be simpler to give the money without the place.  There is,
indeed, no end to them.  On reading various memoirs day after day it
seems as if the treasury was open to plunder.  The courtiers,
unremitting in their attentions to the king, force him to sympathize
with their troubles.  They are his intimates, the guests of his
drawing-room; men of the same stamp as himself, his natural clients,
the only ones with whom he can converse, and whom it is necessary to
make contented; he cannot avoid helping them.  He must necessarily
contribute to the dowries of their children since he has signed their
marriage contracts; he must necessarily enrich them since their
profusion serves for the embellishment of his court.  Nobility being
one of the glories of the throne, the occupant of the throne is
obliged to regild it as often as is necessary.[17] In this connection
a few figures and anecdotes among a thousand speak most
eloquently.[18] -  "The Prince de Pons had a pension of 25,000 livres,
out of the king's bounty, on which his Majesty was pleased to give
6,000 to Mme.  de Marsan, his daughter, Canoness of Remiremont.  The
family represented to the king the bad state of the Prince de Pons's
affairs, and his Majesty was pleased to grant to his son Prince
Camille, 15,000 livres of the pension vacated by the death of his
father, and 5,000 livres increase to Mme.  de Marsan."  -  M. de
Conflans espouses Mlle.  Portail.  "In honor of this marriage the king
was pleased to order that out of the pension of 10,000 livres granted
to Mme.  la Presidente Portail, 6,000 of it should pass to M. de
Conflans after the death of Mme.  Portail."  -  M. de Séchelles, a
retiring minister, "had 12,000 livres on an old pension which the king
continued; he has, besides this, 20,000 livres pension as minister;
and the king gives him in addition to all this a pension of 40,000
livres." The motives, which prompt these favors, are often remarkable.
M. de Rouillé has to be consoled for not having participated in the
treaty of Vienna; this explains why "a pension of 6,000 livres is
given to his niece, Mme.  de Castellane, and another of 10,000 to his
daughter, Mme.  de Beuvron, who is very rich."  -  "M. de Puisieux
enjoys about 76,000 or 77,000 livres income from the bounty of the
king; it is true that he has considerable property, but the revenue of
this property is uncertain, being for the most part in vines."  -  "A
pension of 10,000 livres has just been awarded to the Marquise de Lède
because she is disagreeable to Mme.  Infante, and to secure her
resignation."  -  The most opulent stretch out their hands and take
accordingly.  "It is estimated that last week 128,000 livres in
pensions were bestowed on ladies of the court, while for the past two
years the officers have not received the slightest pension: 8,000
livres to the Duchesse de Chevreuse, whose husband has an income of
500,000 livres; 12,000 livres to Mme.  de Luynes, that she may not be
jealous; 10,000 to the Duchesse de Brancas; 10,000 to the dowager
Duchesse de Brancas, mother of the preceding," etc.  At the head of
these leeches come the princes of the blood.  "The king has just given
1,500,000 livres to M. le Prince de Conti to pay his debts, 1,000,000
of which is under the pretext of indemnifying him for the injury done
him by the sale of Orange, and 500,000 livres as a gratuity." "The Duc
d'Orléans formerly had 50,000 crowns pension, as a poor man, and
awaiting his father's inheritance.  This event making him rich, with an
income of more than 3,000,000 livres, he gave up his pension.  But
having since represented to the king that his expenditure exceeded his
income, the king gave him back his 50,000 crowns."  -  Twenty years
later, in 1780, when Louis XVI., desirous of relieving the treasury,
signs "the great reformation of the table, 600,000 livres are given to
Mesdames for their tables." This is what the dinners, cut down, of
three old ladies, cost the public! For the king's two brothers,
8,300,000 livres, besides 2,000,000 income in appanages; for the
Dauphin, Madame Royale, Madame Elisabeth, and Mesdames 3,500,000
livres; for the queen, 4,000,000: such is the statement of Necker in
1784.  Add to this the casual donations, admitted or concealed; 200,000
francs to M. de Sartines, to aid him in paying his debts; 200,000 to
M. Lamoignon, keeper of the seals; 100,000 to M. de Miromesnil for
expenses in establishing himself; 166,000 to the widow of M. de
Maurepas; 400,000 to the Prince de Salm; 1,200,000 to the Duc de
Polignac for the pledge of the county Fenestranges; 754,337 to
Mesdames to pay for Bellevue.[19]  M. de Calonne," says Augeard, a
reliable witness,[20]  "scarcely entered on his duties, raised a loan
of 100,000,000 livres, one-quarters of which did not find its way into
the royal treasury; the rest was eaten up by people at the court; his
donations to the Comte Artois are estimated at 56,000,000; the portion
of Monsieur is 5,000,000; he gave to the Prince de Condé, in exchange
for 300,000 livres income, 12,000,000 paid down and 600,000 livres
annuity, and he causes the most burdensome acquisition to be made for
the State, in exchanges of which the damage is more than five to one."
We must not forget that in actual rates all these donations, pensions,
and salaries are worth double the amount.  -  Such is the use of the
great in relation to the central power; instead of constituting
themselves representatives of the people, they aimed to be the
favorites of the Sovereign, and they shear the flock which they ought
to preserve.

IV.
Isolation of the Chiefs - Sentiments of subordinates- Provincial
nobility - The Curates.

The fleeced flock is to discover finally what is done with its
wool.  "Sooner or later," says a parliament of 1764,[21]  "the people
will learn that the remnants of our finances continue be wasted in
donations which are frequently undeserved; in excessive and multiplied
pensions for the same persons; in dowries and promises of dowry, and
in useless offices and salaries." Sooner or later they will thrust
back "these greedy hands which are always open and never full; that
insatiable crowd which seems to be born only to seize all and possess
nothing, and pitiless as it is shameless."  -  And when this day
arrives the extortioners will find that they stand alone.  For the
characteristic of an aristocracy which cares only for itself is to
live aloof in a closed circle.  Having forgotten the public, it also
neglects its subordinates; after being separated from the nation it
separates itself from its own adherents.  Like a group of staff-
officers on furlough, it indulges in Sports without giving itself
further concern about inferior officers; when the hour of battle comes
nobody will march under its orders, and chieftains are sought
elsewhere.  Such is the isolation of the seigniors of the court and of
the prelates among the lower grades of the nobility and the clergy;
they appropriate to themselves too large a share, and give nothing, or
almost nothing, to the people who are not of their society.  For a
century a steady murmur against them rising, and goes on expanding
until it becomes an uproar, which the old and the new spirit, feudal
ideas and philosophic ideas, threaten in unison.  "I see," said the
bailiff of Mirabeau,[22]  "that the nobility is demeaning itself and
becoming a wreck.  It is extended to all those children of
bloodsuckers, the vagabonds of finance, introduced by La Pompadour,
herself the spring of this foulness.  One portion of it demeans itself
in its servility to the court; the other portion is amalgamated with
that quill-driving rabble who are converting the blood of the king's
subjects into ink; another perishes stifled beneath vile robes, the
ignoble atoms of cabinet-dust which an office drags up out of the mire
;" and all, parvenus of the old or of the new stock, form a band
called the court, 'The court!" exclaims D'Argenson.  "The entire evil
is found in this word, The court has become the senate of the nation;
the least of the valets at Versailles is a senator; chambermaids take
part in the government, if not to legislate, at least to impede laws
and regulations; and by dint of hindrance there are no longer either
laws, or rules, or law-makers.  .  .  .  Under Henry IV courtiers remained
each one at home; they had not entered into ruinous expenditure to
belong to the court; favors were not thus due to them as at the
present day.  .  .  The court is the sepulcher of the nation." Many noble
officers, finding that high grades are only for courtiers, abandon the
service, and betake themselves with their discontent to their estates.
Others, who have not left their domains, brood there in discomfort,
idleness, and ennui, their ambition embittered by their powerlessness.
In 1789, says the Marquis de Ferrières, most of them "are so weary of
the court and of the ministers, they are almost democrats." At least,
"they want to withdraw the government from the ministerial oligarchy
in whose hands it is concentrated;" there are no grand seigniors for
deputies; they set them aside and "absolutely reject them, saying that
they would traffic with the interests of the nobles;" they themselves,
in their registers, insist that there be no more court nobility.

The same sentiments prevail among the lower clergy, and still more
actively; for they are excluded from the high offices, not only as
inferiors, but also as commoner.[23] Already, in 1766, the Marquis de
Mirabeau writes: "It would be an insult to most of our pretentious
ecclesiastics to offer them a curacy.  Revenues and honors are for the
abbés-commendatory, for tonsured beneficiaries not in orders, for the
numerous chapters (of nobility)." On the contrary, "the true pastors
of souls, the collaborators in the holy ministry, scarcely obtain a
subsistence." The first class "drawn from the nobility and from the
best of the bourgeoisie have pretensions only, without being of the
true ministry.  The other, only having duties to fulfill without
expectations and almost without income .  .  .  can be recruited only
from the lowest ranks of civil society," while the parasites who
despoil the laborers "affect to subjugate them and to degrade them
more and more." "I pity," said Voltaire, "the lot of a country curate,
obliged to contend for a sheaf of wheat with his unfortunate
parishioner, to plead against him, to exact the tithe of peas and
lentils, to waste his miserable existence in constant strife.  .  .  .  I
pity still more the curate with a fixed allowance to whom monks,
called gros decimateurs[24]  dare offer a salary of forty ducats, to
go about during the year, two or three miles from his home, day and
night, in sunshine and in rain, in the snow and in the ice, exercising
the most trying and most disagreeable functions." Attempts are made
for thirty years to secure their salaries and raise them a little; in
case of their inadequacy the beneficiary, collator or tithe-owner of
the parish is required to add to them until the curê obtains 500
livres (1768), then 700 livres (1785), the vicar 200 livres (1768),
then 250 (1778), and finally 350 (1785).  Strictly, at the prices at
which things are, a man may support himself on that.[25]  But he must
live among the destitute to whom he owes alms, and he cherishes at the
bottom of his heart a secret bitterness towards the indolent Dives
who, with full pockets, dispatches him, with empty pockets, on a
mission of charity.  At Saint-Pierre de Barjouville, in the Toulousain,
the archbishop of Toulouse appropriates to himself one-half of the
tithes and gives away eight livres a year in alms.  At Bretx, the
chapter of Isle Jourdain, which retains one-half of certain tithes and
three-quarters of others, gives ten livres; at Croix Falgarde, the
Benedictines, to whom a half of the tithes belong, give ten livres per
annum.[26]  At Sainte-Croix de Bernay in Normandy,[27]  the non-
resident abbé, who receives 57,000 livres gives 1,050 livres to the
curate without a parsonage, whose parish contains 4,000 communicants.
At Saint-Aubin-sur-Gaillon, the abbé, a gros décimateur, gives 350
livres to the vicar, who is obliged to go into the village and obtain
contributions of flour, bread and apples.  At Plessis Hébert, "the
substitute deportuaire,[28] not having enough to live on is obliged to
get his meals in the houses of neighboring curates." In Artois, where
the tithes are often seven and a half and eight per cent.  on he
product of the soil, a number of curates have a fixed rate and no
parsonage; their church goes to ruin and the beneficiary gives nothing
to the poor.  "At Saint-Laurent, in Normandy, the curacy is worth not
more than 400 livres, which the curate shares with an obitier,[29]
and there are 500 inhabitants, three quarters of whom receive alms."
As the repairs on a parsonage or on a church are usually at the
expense of a seignior or of a beneficiary often far off, and in debt
or indifferent, it sometimes happens that the priest does not know
where to lodge, or to say mass.  "I arrived," says a curate of the
Touraine, "in the month of June, 1788.  .  .  .  The parsonage would
resemble a hideous cave were it not open to all the winds and the
frosts.  Below there are two rooms with stone floors, without doors or
windows, and five feet high; a third room six feet high, paved with
stone, serves as parlor, hall, kitchen, wash-house, bakery, and sink
for the water of the court and garden.  Above are three similar rooms,
the whole cracking and tumbling in ruins, absolutely threatening to
fail, without either doors and windows that hold." And, in 1790, the
repairs are not yet made.  See, by way of contrast, the luxury of the
prelates possessing half a million income, the pomp of their palaces,
the hunting equipment of M. de Dillon, bishop of Evreux, the
confessionals lined with satin of M. de Barral, bishop of Troyes, and
the innumerable culinary utensils in massive silver of M. de Rohan,
bishop of Strasbourg.  -  Such is the lot of curates at the
established rates, and there are "a great many" who do not get the
established rates, withheld from them through the ill-will of the
higher clergy; who, with their perquisites, get only from 400 to 500
livres, and who vainly ask for the meager pittance to which they are
entitled by the late edict.  "Should not such a request," says a
curate, "be willingly granted by Messieurs of the upper clergy who
suffer monks to enjoy from 5 to 6,000 livres income each person,
whilst they see curates, who are at least as necessary, reduced to the
lighter portion, as little for themselves as for their parish? "  -
And they yet gnaw on this slight pittance to pay the free gift.  In
this, as in the rest, the poor are charged to discharge the rich.  In
the diocese of Clermont, "the curates, even with the simple fixed
rates, are subject to a tax of 60, 80, 100, 120 livres and even more;
the vicars, who live only by the sweat of their brows, are taxed 22
livres." The prelates, on the contrary, pay but little, and "it is
still a custom to present bishops on New-Year's day with a receipt for
their taxes."[30]  -  There is no escape for the curates.  Save two or
three small bishoprics of "lackeys," all the dignities of the church
are reserved to the nobles; "to be a bishop nowadays," says one of
them, "a man must be a gentleman." I regard them as sergeants who,
like their fellows in the army, have lost all hope of becoming
officers.  -  Hence there are some whose anger bursts its bounds: "We,
unfortunate curates at fixed rates; we, commonly assigned to the
largest parishes, like my own which, for two leagues in the woods,
includes hamlets that would form another; we, whose lot makes even the
stones and beams of our miserable dwellings cry aloud," we have to
endure prelates "who would still, through their forest-keepers,
prosecute a poor curate for cutting a stick in their forests, his sole
support on his long journeys over the road." On their passing, the
poor man "is obliged to jump close against a slope to protect himself
from the feet and the spattering of the horses, as likewise from the
wheels and, perhaps, the whip of an insolent coachman," and then,
"begrimed with dirt, with his stick in one hand and his hat, such as
it is, in the other, he must salute, humbly and quickly, through the
door of the close, gilded carriage, the counterfeit hierophant who is
snoring on the wool of the flock the poor curate is feeding, and of
which he merely leaves him the dung and the grease." The whole letter
is one long cry of rage; it is rancor of this stamp which is to
fashion Joseph Lebons and Fouchés.  -  In this situation and with
these sentiments it is evident that the lower clergy will treat its
chiefs as the provincial nobility treated theirs.[31]  They will not
select "for representatives those who swim in opulence and who have
always regarded their sufferings with tranquility." The curates, on
all sides "will confederate together" to send only curates to the
States-General, and to exclude "not only canons, abbés, priors and
other beneficiaries, but again the principal superiors, the heads of
the hierarchy," that is to say, the bishops.  In fact, in the States-
General, out of three hundred clerical deputies we count two hundred
and eight curates, and, like the provincial nobles, these bring along
with them the distrust and the ill-will which they have so long
entertained against their chiefs.  Events are soon to prove this.  If
the first two orders are constrained to combine against the communes
it is at the critical moment when the curates withdraw.  If the
institution of an upper chamber is rejected it is owing to the
commonalty of the gentry (la plèbe des gentilshommes) being unwilling
to allow the great families a prerogative which they have abused.

V.  The King's Incompetence and Generosity.

The most privileged of all -  Having monopolized all powers, he
takes upon himself their functional activity - The burden of this task
- He evades it or is incompetent - His conscience at ease - France is
his property - How he abuses it - Royalty the center of abuses.

One privilege remains the most considerable of all, that of the
king; for, in his staff of hereditary nobles he is the hereditary
general.  His office, indeed, is not a sinecure, like their rank; but
it involves quite as grave disadvantages and worse temptations.  Two
things are pernicious to Man, the lack of occupation and the lack of
restraint; neither inactivity nor omnipotence are in harmony with his
nature.  The absolute prince who is all-powerful, like the listless
aristocracy with nothing to do, in the end become useless and
mischievous.  -  In grasping all powers the king insensibly took upon
himself all functions; an immense undertaking and one surpassing human
strength.  For it is the Monarchy, and not the Revolution, which
endowed France with administrative centralization [32].  Three
functionaries, one above the other, manage all public business under
the direction of the king's council; the comptroller-general at the
center, the intendant in each generalship,[33]  the sub-delegate in
each election, fixing, apportioning and levying taxes and the militia,
laying out and building highways, employing the national police force,
distributing succor, regulating cultivation, imposing their tutelage
on the parishes, and treating municipal magistrates as valets.  "A
village," says Turgot,[34]  "is simply an assemblage of houses and
huts, and of inhabitants equally passive.  .  .  .  Your Majesty is
obliged to decide wholly by yourself or through your mandataries.  .  .
.  Each awaits your special instructions to contribute to the public
good, to respect the rights of others, and even sometimes to exercise
his own." Consequently, adds Necker, "the government of France is
carried on in the bureaux.  .  ..The clerks, relishing their influence,
never fail to persuade the minister that he cannot separate himself
from command in a single detail." Bureaucratic at the center,
arbitrariness, exceptions and favors everywhere, such is a summary of
the system.  "Sub-delegates, officers of elections, receivers and
comptrollers of the vingtièmes, commissaires and collectors of the
tailles, officers of the salt-tax, process-servers, voituriers-
buralistes, overseers of the corvées, clerks of the excise, of the
registry, and of dues reserved, all these men belonging to the tax-
service.  Each of these will, aided by his fiscal knowledge and petty
authority, so overwhelm the ignorant and inexperienced tax payer that
he does not recognize that he is being cheated." [35] A rude species
of centralization with no control over it, with no publicity, without
uniformity, thus installs over the whole country an army of petty
pashas who, as judges, decide causes in which they are themselves
contestants, ruling by delegation, and, to sanction their theft or
their insolence, always having on their lips the name of the king, who
is obliged to let them do as they please.  -  In short, the machine,
through its complexity, irregularity, and dimensions, escapes from his
grasp.  A Frederick II.  who rises at four o'clock in the morning, a
Napoleon who dictates half the night in his bath, and who works
eighteen hours a day, would scarcely suffice for its needs.  Such a
régime cannot operate without constant strain, without indefatigable
energy, without infallible discernment, without military rigidity,
without superior genius; on these conditions alone can one convert
twenty-five millions of men into automatons and substitute his own
will, lucid throughout, coherent throughout and everywhere present,
for the wills of those he abolishes.  Louis XV lets "the good machine"
work by itself, while he settles down into apathy.  "They would have it
so, they thought it all for the best,"[36]  is his manner of speaking
when ministerial measures prove unsuccessful.  "If I were a lieutenant
of the police," he would say again, "I would prohibit cabs." In vain
is he aware of the machine being dislocated, for he can do nothing and
he causes nothing to be done.  In the event of misfortune he has a
private reserve, his purse apart.  "The king," said Mme.  de Pompadour,
"would sign away a million without thinking of it, but he would
scarcely bestow a hundred louis out of his own little treasury."  -
Louis XVI strives for some time to remove some of the wheels, to
introduce better ones and to reduce the friction of the rest; but the
pieces are too rusty, and too weighty.  He cannot adjust them, or
harmonize them and keep them in their places; his hand falls by his
side wearied and powerless.  He is content to practice economy himself;
he records in his journal the mending of his watch, and leaves the
State carriage in the hands of Calonne to be loaded with fresh abuses
that it may revert back to the old rut from which it is to issue only
by breaking down.

Undoubtedly the wrong they do, or which is done in their name,
dissatisfies the kings and upsets them, but, at the bottom, their
conscience is not disturbed.  They may feel compassion for the people,
but they do not feel guilty; they are its sovereigns and not its
representatives.  France, to them, is as a domain to its lord, and a
lord is not deprived of honor in being prodigal and neglectful.  He
merely gambles away his own property, and nobody has a right to call
him to account.  Founded on feudal society, royalty is like an estate,
an inheritance.  It would be infidelity, almost treachery in a prince,
in any event weak and base, should he allow any portion of the trust
received by him intact from his ancestors for transmission to his
children, to pass into the hands of his subjects.  Not only according
to medieval traditions is he proprietor-commandant of the French and
of France, but again, according to the theory of the jurists, he is,
like Caesar, the sole and perpetual representative of the nation, and,
according to the theological doctrine, like David, the sacred and
special delegate of God himself.  It would be astonishing, if, with all
these titles, he did not consider the public revenue as his personal
revenue, and if, in many cases, he did not act accordingly.  Our point
of view, in this matter, is so essentially opposed to his, we can
scarcely put ourselves in his place; but at that time his point of
view was everybody's point of view.  It seemed, then, as strange to
meddle with the king's business as to meddle with that of a private
person.  Only at the end of the year 1788[37] the famous salon of the
Palais-Royal "with boldness and unimaginable folly, asserts that in a
true monarchy the revenues of the State should not be at the
sovereign's disposition; that he should be granted merely a sum
sufficient to defray the expenses of his establishment, of his
donations, and for favors to his servants as well as for his
pleasures, while the surplus should be deposited in the royal treasury
to be devoted only to purposes sanctioned by the National Assembly.  To
reduce the sovereign to a civil list, to seize nine-tenths of his
income, to forbid him cash on demand, what an outrage! The surprise
would be no greater if at the present day it were proposed to divide
the income of each millionaire into two portions, the smallest to go
for the owner's support, and the largest to be placed in the hands of
a government to be expended in works of public utility.  An old farmer-
general, an intellectual and unprejudiced man, gravely attempts to
justify the purchase of Saint-Cloud by calling it "a ring for the
queen's finger." The ring cost, indeed, 7,700,000 francs, but "the
king of France then had an income of 447,000,000.  What could be said
of any private individual who, with 477,000 livres income, should, for
once in his life, give his wife diamonds worth 7,000 or 8,000
livres?"[38]  People would say that the gift is moderate, and that the
husband is reasonable.

To properly understand the history of our kings, let the
fundamental principle be always recognized that France is their land,
a farm transmitted from father to son, at first small, then slowly
enlarged, and, at last, prodigiously enlarged, because the proprietor,
always alert, has found means to make favorable additions to it at the
expense of his neighbors; at the end of eight hundred years it
comprises about 27,000 square leagues of territory.  His interests and
his vanity harmonize, certainly, in several areas with public welfare;
he is, all in all, not a poor administrator, and, since he has always
expanded his territory, he has done better than many others.  Moreover,
around him, a number of expert individuals, old family councilors,
withdrawn from business and devoted to the domain, with good heads an
gray beards, respectfully remonstrate with him when he spends too
freely; they often interest him in public improvements, in roads,
canals, homes for the invalids, military schools, scientific
institutions and charity workshops; in the control of trust-funds and
foundations, in the tolerance of heretics, in the postponement of
monastic vows to the age of twenty-one, in provincial assemblies, and
in other reforms by which a feudal domain becomes transformed into a
modern domain.  Nevertheless, the country, feudal or modern, remains
his property, which he can abuse as well as use; however, whoever uses
with full sway ends by abusing with full license.  If, in his ordinary
conduct, personal motives do not prevail over public motives, he might
be a saint like Louis IX, a stoic like Marcus Aurelius, while
remaining a seignior, a man of the world like the people of his court,
yet more badly brought up, worse surrounded, more solicited, more
tempted and more blindfolded.  At the very least he has, like them, his
own vanity, his own tastes, his own relatives, his mistress, his wife,
his friends, all intimate and influential solicitors who must first be
satisfied, while the nation only comes after them.  -  The result is,
that, for a hundred years, from 1672 to 1774, whenever he makes war it
is through wounded pride, through family interest, through calculation
of private advantages, or to gratify a woman.  Louis XV maintains his
wars yet worse than in undertaking them;"[39] while Louis XVI, during
the whole of his foreign policy, finds himself hemmed in by the
marriage he has made.  -  At home the king lives like other nobles,
but more grandly, because he is the greatest lord in France; I shall
describe his court presently, and further on we shall see by what
exactions this pomp is made possible.  In the meantime let us note two
or three details.  According to authentic statements, Louis XV expended
on Mme.  de Pompadour thirty-six millions of livres, which is at least
seventy-two millions nowadays[40]  According to d'Argenson,[41] in
1751, he has 4,000 horses in his stable, and we are assured that his
household alone, or his person, "cost this year 68,000,000," almost a
quarter of the public revenue.  Why be astonished if we look upon the
sovereign in the manner of the day, that is to say, as a lord of the
manor enjoying of his hereditary property? He constructs, he
entertains, he gives festivals, he hunts, and he spends money
according to his station.  Moreover, being the master of his own funds,
he gives to whomsoever he pleases, and all his selections are favors.
Abbé de Vermond writes to Empress Maria Theresa[42]

"Your Majesty knows better than myself, that, according to
immemorial custom, three-fourths of the places honors and pensions are
awarded not on account of services but out of favor and through
influence.  This favor was originally prompted by birth, alliance and
fortune; the fact is that it nearly always is based on patronage and
intrigue.  This procedure is so well established, that is respected as
a sort of justice even by those who suffer the most from it.  A man of
worth not able to dazzle by his court alliances, nor through a
brilliant expenditure, would not dare to demand a regiment, however
ancient and illustrious his services, or his birth.  Twenty years ago,
the sons of dukes and ministers, of people attached to the court, of
the relations and protégés of mistresses, became colonels at the age
of sixteen.  M. de Choiseul caused loud complaints on extending this
age to twenty-three years.  But to compensate favoritism and absolutism
he assigned to the pure grace of the king, or rather to that of his
ministers, the appointment to the grades of lieutenant-colonel and
major which, until that time, belonged of right to priority of
services in the government; also the commands of provinces and of
towns.  You are aware that these places have been largely multiplied,
and that they are bestowed through favor and credit, like the
regiments.  The cordon bleu and the cordon rouge are in the like
position, and abbeys are still more constantly subject to the régime
of influence.  As to positions in the finances, I dare not allude to
them.  Appointments in the judiciary are the most conditioned by
services rendered; and yet how much do not influence and
recommendation affect the nomination of intendants, first presidents"
and the others?

Necker, entering on his duties, finds twenty-eight millions in
pensions paid from the royal treasury, and, at his fall, there is an
outflow of money showered by millions on the people of the court.  Even
during his term of office the king allows himself to make the fortunes
of his wife's friends of both sexes; the Countess de Polignac obtains
400,000 francs to pay her debts, 100,000 francs dowry for her
daughter, and, besides, for herself, the promise of an estate of
35,000 livres income, and, for her lover, the Count de Vaudreil, a
pension of 30,000 livres; the Princess de Lamballe obtains 100,000
crowns per annum, as much for the post of superintendent of the
queen's household, which is revived on her behalf, as for a position
for her brother.[43] The king is reproached for his parsimony; why
should he be sparing of his purse? Started on a course not his own, he
gives, buys, builds, and exchanges; he assists those belonging to his
own society, doing everything in a style becoming to a grand seignior,
that is to say, throwing money away by handfuls.One instance enables
us to judge of this: in order to assist the bankrupt Guéménée family,
he purchases of them three estates for about 12,500,000 livres, which
they had just purchased for 4,000,000; moreover, in exchange for two
domains in Brittany, which produce 33,758 livres income, he makes over
to them the principality of Dombes which produces nearly 70,000 livres
income.[44]  -  When we come to read the Red Book further on we shall
find 700,000 livres of pensions for the Polignac family, most of them
revertible from one member to another, and nearly 2,000,000 of annual
benefits to the Noailles family.  -  The king has forgotten that his
favors are mortal blows, "the courtier who obtains 6,000 livres
pension, receiving the taille of six villages."[45]  Each largess of
the monarch, considering the state of the taxes, is based on the
privation of the peasants, the sovereign, through his clerks, taking
bread from the poor to give coaches to the rich.  -  The center of the
government, in short, is the center of the evil; all the wrongs and
all the miseries start from it as from the center of pain and
inflammation; here it is that the public abscess comes to the head,
and here will it break.[46]


VI.  Latent Disorganization in France.

  Such is the just and fatal effect of privileges turned to selfish
purposes instead of being exercised for the advantage of others.  To
him who utters the word, "Sire or Seignior" stands for the protector
who feeds, the ancient who leads."[47] With such a title and for this
purpose too much cannot be granted to him, for there is no more
difficult or more exalted post.  But he must fulfill its duties;
otherwise in the day of peril he will be left to himself.  Already, and
long before the day arrives, his flock is no longer his own; if it
marches onward it is through routine; it is simply a multitude of
persons, but no longer an organized body.  Whilst in Germany and in
England the feudal régime, retained or transformed, still composes a
living society, in France[48]  its mechanical framework encloses only
so many human particles.  We still find the material order, but we no
longer find the moral order of things.  A lingering, deep-seated
revolution has destroyed the close hierarchical union of recognized
supremacies and of voluntary deference.  It is like an army in which
the attitudes of chiefs and subordinates have disappeared; grades are
indicated by uniforms only, but they have no hold on consciences.  All
that constitutes a well-founded army, the legitimate ascendancy of
officers, the justified trust of soldiers, the daily interchange of
mutual obligations, the conviction of each being useful to all, and
that the chiefs are the most useful all, is missing.  How could it be
otherwise in an army whose staff-officers have no other occupation but
to dine out, to display their epaulettes and to receive double pay?
Long before the final crash France is in a state of dissolution, and
she is in a state of dissolution because the privileged classes had
forgotten their characters as public men.
_____________________________________________________________________

Notes:

[1].  "Rapport de l'agence du clergé," from 1775 to 1780, pp.  31-
34.  - Ibid.  from 1780 to 1785, p.  237.

[2].  Lanfrey, "L'Eglise et les philosophes," passim.

[3].  Boiteau, "Etat de la France en 1789," pp.  205, 207.  -
D'Argenson "Mémoires," May 5, 1752, September 3, 22, 25, 1753;
October 17, 1753, and October 26, 1775.  - Prudhomme, "Résumé général
des cahiers des Etats-Généraux," 1789, (Registers of the Clergy).--
"Histoire des églises du désert," par Charles Coquerel, I.  151 and
those following.

[4].  De Ségur, "Mémoires," vol.  I.  pp.  16, 41.  - De Bouillé,
"Mémoires," p.  54.  - Mme.  Campan, "Mémoires," V.  I.  p.  237, proofs in
detail.

[5].  Somewhat like the socialist societies including the welfare
states where a caste of public pensionaries, functionaries, civil
servants and politicians weigh like a heavy burden on those who
actually do the work..  (SR.)

[6].  An antechamber in the palace of Versailles in which there was
a round or bull's-eye window, where courtiers assembled to await the
opening of the door into the king's apartment.  - TR.

[7].  "La France ecclésiastique," 1788.

[8].  Grannier de Cassagnac, "Des causes de la Rèvolution
Française," III.  58.

[9].  Marmontel, "Mémoires,"  .  II.  book XIII.  p.  221.

[10].  Boiteau, "Etat de la France en 1789," pp.  55, 248.  -
D'Argenson, "Considérations sur le gouvermement de la France," p.  177.
De Luynes, "Journal," XIII.  226, XIV.  287, XIII.  33, 158, 162, 118,
233, 237, XV.  268, XVI.  304.  - The government of Ham is worth 11,250
livres, that of Auxerre 12,000, that of Briançon 12,000, that of the
islands of Ste.  Marguerite 16,000 , that of Schelestadt 15,000, that
of Brisach from 15 to 16,000 , that of Gravelines 18,000.  - The
ordinance of 1776 had reduced these various places as follows:
(Warroquier, II, 467).  18 general governments to 60,000 livres, 21 to
30,000; 114 special governments; 25 to 12,000 livres, 25 to 10,000 and
64 to 8,000; 176 lieutenants and commandants of towns, places, etc.,
of which 35 were reduced to 16,600 and 141 from 2,000 to 6,000.  - The
ordinance of 1788 established, besides these, 17 commands in chief
with from 20,000 to 30,000 livres fixed salary and from 4,000 to 6,000
a month for residence, and commands of a secondary grade.

[11].  Somewhat like a minister of culture in one of our western
Welfare Social democracies, and which secures the support for the
ruling class of a horde of "artists" of all sorts.  (SR.)

[12].  Archives nationales, H, 944, April 25, and September 20,
1780.  Letters and Memoirs of Furgole, advocate at Toulouse.

[13].  Archives nationales, O1, 738 (Reports made to the bureau-
general of the king's household, March, 1780, by M. Mesnard de
Chousy).  Augeard, "Mémoires," 97.  - Mme.  Campan, "Mémoires," I.  291.  -
D'Argenson, "Mémoires," February 10, December 9, 1751, - "Essai sur
les capitaineries royales et autres" (1789), p.  80.  - Warroquier,
"Etat de la France en 1789," I.  266.

[14].  "Marie Antoinette," by D'Arneth and Geffroy, II.  377.

[15].  1 crown (écu) equals 6 livres under Louis XV.  (SR.)

[16].  Mme.  Campan, "Mémoires," I.  296, 298, 300, 301; III.  78.  -
Hippeau, "Le Gouvernement de Normandie," IV.  171 (Letter from Paris,
December 13, 1780).  - D'Argenson, "Mémoires," September 5, 1755.  -
Bachaumont, January 19, 1758.  - "Mémoire sur l'imposition
territoriale," by M. de Calonne (1787), p.  54.

[17].  D'Argenson, "Mémoires," December 9, 1751.  "The expense to
courtiers of two new and magnificent coats, each for two fête days,
ordered by the king, completely ruins them."

[18].  De Luynes, "Journal," XIV.  pp.  147-295, XV.  36, 119.  -
D'Argenson, "Mémoires," April 8, 1752, March 30 and July 28, 1753,
July 2, 1735, June 23, 1756.  - Hippeau, ibid..  IV.  p.  153 (Letter of
May 15, 1780).  - Necker, "De l'Administration des Finances," II.  pp.
265, 269, 270, 271, 228.  - Augeard, "Mémoires," p 249.

[19].  Nicolardot, "Journal de Louis XVI.," p.  228.  Appropriations
in the Red Book of 1774 to 1789: 227,985,716 livres, of which
80,000,000 are in acquisitions and gifts to the royal family.  - Among
others there are 14,600,000 to the Comte d'Artois and 14,450,000 to
Monsieur.  - 7,726,253 are given to the Queen for Saint-Cloud.  -
8,70,000 for the acquisition of Ile-Adam.

[20].  Cf .  "Compte général des revenus et dépenses fixes au 1er
Mai, 1789" (Imprimerie royale, 1789, in 4to).  Estate of Ile-Dieu,
acquired in 1783 of the Duc de Mortemart, 1,000,000; estate of
Viviers, acquired of the Prince de Soubise in 1784, 1,500,000.  -
Estates of St.  Priest and of St.  Etienne, acquired in 1787 of M.
Gilbert des Voisins, 1,335,935.  - The forests of Camors and of
Floranges, acquired of the Duc de Liancourt in 1785, 1,200,000.  - The
county of Montgommery, acquired of M. Clement de Basville in 1785,
3,306,604.

[21].  "Le President des Brosses," by Foisset.  (Remonstrances to the
king by the Parliament of Dijon, Jan.  19, 1764).

[22].  Lucas de Montigny, "Mémoires de Mirabeau." Letter of the
bailiff, May 26, 1781.  - D'Argenson, "Mémoires," VI.  156, 157, 160,
76; VI.  p.  320.  - Marshal Marmont, "Mémoires," I.  9.  - De Ferrières,
"Mémoires," preface.  See, on the difficulty in succeeding, the Memoirs
of Dumourier.  Châteaubriand's father is likewise one of the
discontented, "a political frondeur, and very inimical to the court."
(I.  206).  - Records of the States-General of 1789, a general summary
by Prud'homme, II.  passim.

[23].  "Ephémérides du citoyen," II.  202, 203.  - Voltaire,
"Dictionnaire philosophique," article "Curé de Campagne." - Abbé
Guettée, "Histoire de l'Eglise de France," XII.  130.

[24].  Those entitled to tithes in cereals.- TR.

[25].  A curate's salary at the present day (1875) is, at the
minimum, 900 francs with a house and perquisites.

[26].  Théron de Montaugé, "L'Agriculture les classes rurale, dans
le pays Toulousain," p.  86.

[27].  Périn, "la Jeunesse de Robespierre," grievances of the rural
parishes of Artois, p.  320.-- Boivin-Champeaux, ibid..  pp.  65, 68.  -
Hippeau, ibid..  VI.  p.  79, et VII.  177.  - Letter of M. Sergent, curate
of Vallers, January 27, 1790.  (Archives nationales, DXIX.  portfolio
24.) Letter of M. Briscard, curate of Beaumont-la-Roger, diocese of
Evreux, December 19, 1789.  (ibid..  DXIX.  portfolio 6.) "Tableau moral
du clergé de France" (1789), p.  2.

[28].  He who has the right of receiving the first year's income of
a parish church after a vacancy caused by death.- TR.

[29].  One who performs masses for the dead at fixed epochs.- TR.

[30].  Grievances on the additional burdens which the Third-Estate
have to support, by Gautier de Bianzat (1788), p 237.

[31].  Hippeau, ibid.  VI.  164.  (Letter of the Curate of Marolles and
of thirteen others,.  Letter of the bishop of Evreux, March 20, 1789.
Letter of the abbé d'Osmond, April 2, 1789).  - Archives nationales,
manuscript documents (proces-verbeaux) of the States-General, V.  148.
pp.  245-47.  Registers of the curates of Toulouse, t.  150, p.  282, in
the representations of the Dijon chapter.

[32].  De Toqueville, book II.  This capital truth as been
established by M. de Tocqueville with superior discernment.

[33].  A term indicating a certain division of the kingdom of France
to facilitate the collection of taxes.  Each generalship was subdivided
into elections, in which there was a tribunal called the bureau of
finances.  (TR.)

[34].  Remonstrances of Malesherbes; Registers by Turgot and Necker
to the king, (Laboulaye, "De l'administration française sous Louis
XVI, Revue des cours littéraires, IV.  423, 759, 814.)

[35].  Financiers have been known to tell citizens: "The ferme (
revenue-agency) ought to be able to grant you favors, you ought to be
forced to come and ask for them.  -  He who pays never knows what he
owes.  The fermier is sovereign legislator in matters relating to his
personal interest.  Every petition, in which the interests of a
province, or those of the whole nation are concerned, is regarded as
penal foolhardiness if it is signed by a person in his private
capacity, and as illicit association if it be signed by several."
Malesherbes, ibid..

[36].  Mme.  Campan, "Mémoires," I.  p.  13.  -  Mme.  du Hausset,
"Mémoires," p.  114.

[37].  "Gustave III.  et la cour de France," by Geffroy.  II.  474.
("Archives de Dresde," French Correspondence, November 20, 1788.)

[38].  Augeard, "Mémoires," p.  135.

[39].  Mme.  de Pompadour, writing to Marshal d'Estrées, in the army,
about the campaign operations, and tracing for him a sort of plan, had
marked on the paper with mouches (face-patches), the different places
which she advised him to attack or defend." Mme.  de Genlis, "Souvenirs
de Félicie," p.  329.  Narrative by Mme.  de Puisieux, the mother-in-law
of Marshal d'Estrées.

[40].  According to the manuscript register of Mme.  de Pompadour's
expenses, in the archives of the préfecture of Versailles, she had
expended 36,327,268 livres.  (Granier de Cassagnac, I.  91.)

[41].  D'Argenson, "Mémoires," VI.  398 (April 24, 1751).  - "M. du
Barry declared openly that he had consumed 18,000,000 belonging to the
State." (Correspondence by Métra, I.  27).

[42].  "Marie Antoinette," by d'Arneth and Geffroy, vol.  II.  p.  168
(June 5, 1774).

[43].  "Marie Antoinette," ibid..  vol.  II.  p.  377; vol.  III.  p.  391.

[44].  Archives nationales, H, 1456, Memoir for M. Bouret de
Vezelay, syndic for the creditors.

[45].  Marquis de Mirabeau, "Traité de la population," p.  81.

[46] Today, our so-called popular democracies have become completely 
irresponsible since the elected, who have full access to the coffers of the 
nation, present and future, and who, through alternation and short duration 
of tenure, are encouraged to become irresponsible, will use large amounts to 
be favorably exposed in the media and to avoid any kind of mudslinging.  
They seem to govern their countries according to the devise: "After me the 
deluge." (SR.)

[47].  Lord, in Old Saxon, signifies "he who provides food;"
seignior, in the Latin of the middle ages, signifies "the ancient,"
the  head or chief of the flock.

[48].  Around 1780.  (SR.)




BOOK SECOND.  MORALS AND CHARACTERS.

CHAPTER I.  MORAL PRINCIPLES UNDER THE ANCIENT REGIME.

The Court and a life of pomp and parade.

A military staff on furlough for a century and more, around a
commander-in-chief who gives fashionable entertainment, is the
principle and summary of the habits of society under the ancient
régime.  Hence, if we seek to comprehend them we must first study them
at their center and their source, that is to say, in the court itself.
Like the whole ancient régime the court is the empty form, the
surviving adornment of a military institution, the causes of which
have disappeared while the effects remain, custom surviving utility.
Formerly, in the early times of feudalism, in the companionship and
simplicity of the camp and the castle, the nobles served the king with
their own hands.  One providing for his house, another bringing a dish
to his table, another disrobing him at night, and another looking
after his falcons and horses.  Still later, under Richelieu and during
the Fronde,[1] amid the sudden attacks and the rude exigencies of
constant danger they constitute the garrison of his lodgings, forming
an armed escort for him, and a retinue of ever-ready swordsmen.  Now as
formerly they are equally assiduous around his person, wearing their
swords, awaiting a word, and eager to his bidding, while those of
highest rank seemingly perform domestic service in his household.
Pompous parade, however, has been substituted for efficient service;
they are elegant adornments only and no longer useful tools; they act
along with the king who is himself an actor, their persons serving as
royal decoration.

I.  Versailles.

The Physical aspect and the moral character of Versailles.

It must be admitted that the decoration is successful, and, that
since the fêtes of the Italian Renaissance, more magnificent displays
have not been seen.  Let us follow the file of carriages which, from
Paris to Versailles, rolls steadily along like a river.  Certain horses
called "des enragés," fed in a particular way, go and come in three
hours.[2] One feels, at the first glance, as if he were in a city of a
particular stamp, suddenly erected and at one stroke, like a prize-
medal for a special purpose, of which only one is made, its form being
a thing apart, as well as its origin and use.  In vain is it one of the
largest cities of the kingdom, with its population of 80,000 souls;[3]
it is filled, peopled, and occupied by the life of a single man; it is
simply a royal residence, arranged entirely to provide for the wants,
the pleasures, the service, the guardianship, the society, the display
of a king.  Here and there, in corners and around it, are inns, stalls,
taverns, hovels for laborers and for drudges, for dilapidated soldiers
and accessory menials.  These tenements necessarily exist, since
technicians are essential to the most magnificent apotheosis.  The
rest, however, consists of sumptuous hotels and edifices, sculptured
façades, cornices and balustrades, monumental stairways, seigniorial
architecture, regularly spaced and disposed, as in a procession,
around the vast and grandiose palace where all this terminates.  Here
are the fixed abodes of the noblest families; to the right of the
palace are the hôtels de Bourbon, d'Ecquervilly, de la Trémoille, de
Condé, de Maurepas, de Bouillon, d'Eu, de Noailles, de Penthièvre, de
Livry, du Comte de la Marche, de Broglie, du Prince de Tingry,
d'Orléans, de Chatillon, de Villerry, d'Harcourt, de Monaco; on the
left are the pavilions d'Orléans, d'Harcourt, the hôtels de Chevreuse,
de Babelle, de l'Hôpital, d'Antin, de Dangeau, de Pontchartrain  -  no
end to their enumeration.  Add to these those of Paris, all those
which, ten leagues around.  At Sceaux, at Génevilliers, at Brunoy, at
Ile-Adam, at Rancy, at Saint-Ouen, at Colombes, at Saint-Germain, at
Marly, at Bellevue, in countless places, they form a crown of
architectural flowers, from which daily issue as many gilded wasps to
shine and buzz about Versailles, the center of all luster and
affluence.  About a hundred of these are "presented each year, men and
women, which makes about 2 or 3,000 in all;[4] this forms the king's
society, the ladies who courtesy before him, and the seigniors who
accompany him in his carriage; their hotels are near by, or within
reach, ready to fill his drawing room or his antechamber at all hours.

A drawing room like this calls for proportionate dependencies; the
hotels and buildings at Versailles devoted to the private service of
the king and his attendants count by hundreds.  No human existence
since that of the Caesars has so spread itself out in the sunshine.  In
the Rue des Reservoirs we have the old hotel and the new one of the
governor of Versailles, the hotel of the tutor to the children of the
Comte d'Artois, the ward-robe of the crown, the building for the
dressing-rooms and green-rooms of the actors who perform at the
palace, with the stables belonging to Monsieur.  -  In the Rue des
Bon-Enfants are the hotel of the keeper of the wardrobe, the lodgings
for the fountain-men, the hotel of the officers of the Comtesse de
Provence.  In the Rue de la Pompe, the hotel of the grand-provost, the
Duke of Orleans's stables, the hotel of the Comte d'Artois's
guardsmen, the queen's stables, the pavilion des Sources.  -  In the
Rue Satory the Comtesse d'Artois's stables, Monsieur's English garden,
the king's ice-houses, the riding-hall of the king's light-horse-
guards, the garden belonging to the hotel of the treasurers of the
buildings.  -  Judge of other streets by these four.  One cannot take a
hundred steps without encountering some accessory of the palace: the
hotel of the staff of the body-guard, the hotel of the staff of light-
horse-guards, the immense hotel of the body-guard itself, the hotel of
the gendarmes of the guard, the hotel of the grand wolf-huntsman, of
the grand falconer, of the grand huntsman, of the grand-master, of the
commandant of the canal, of the comptroller-general, of the
superintendent of the buildings, and of the chancellor; buildings
devoted to falconry, and the vol de cabinet, to boar-hunting, to the
grand kennel, to the dauphin kennel, to the kennel for untrained dogs,
to the court carriages, to shops and storehouses connected with
amusements, to the great stable and the little stables, to other
stables in the Rue de Limoges, in the Rue Royale, and in the Avenue
Saint-Cloud; to the king's vegetable garden, comprising twenty-nine
gardens and four terraces; to the great dwelling occupied by 2,000
persons, with other tenements called "Louises" in which the king
assigned temporary or permanent lodgings,  -  words on paper render no
physical impression of the physical enormity.  -  At the present day
nothing remains of this old Versailles, mutilated and appropriated to
other uses, but fragments, which, nevertheless, one should go and see.
Observe those three avenues meeting in the great square.  Two hundred
and forty feet broad and twenty-four hundred long, and not too large
for the gathering crowds, the display, the blinding velocity of the
escorts in full speed and of the carriages running "at death's
door."[5] Observe the two stables facing the chateau with their
railings one hundred and ninety-two feet long.  In 1682 they cost three
millions, that is to say, fifteen millions to day.  They are so ample
and beautiful that, even under Louis XIV himself, they sometimes
served as a cavalcade circus for the princes, sometimes as a theater,
and sometimes as a ball-room.  Then let the eye follow the development
of the gigantic semi-circular square which, from railing to railing
and from court to court, ascends and slowly decreases, at first
between the hotels of the ministers and then between the two colossal
wings, terminating in the ostentatious frame of the marble court where
pilasters, statues, pediments, and multiplied and accumulated
ornaments, story above story, carry the majestic regularity of their
lines and the overcharged mass of their decoration up to the sky.
According to a bound manuscript bearing the arms of Mansart, the
palace cost 153 million, that is to say, about 750 million francs of
to day;[6] when a king aims at imposing display this is the cost of
his lodging.  Now turn the eye to the other side, towards the gardens,
and this self-display becomes the more impressive.  The parterres and
the park are, again, a drawing room in the open air.  There is nothing
natural of nature here; she is put in order and rectified wholly with
a view to society; this is no place to be alone and to relax oneself,
but a place for promenades and the exchange of polite salutations.
Those formal groves are walls and hangings; those shaven yews are
vases and lyres.  The parterres are flowering carpets.  In those
straight, rectilinear avenues the king, with his cane in his hand,
groups around him his entire retinue.  Sixty ladies in brocade dresses,
expanding into skirts measuring twenty-four feet in circumference,
easily find room on the steps of the staircases.[7] Those verdant
cabinets afford shade for a princely collation.  Under that circular
portico, all the seigniors enjoying the privilege of entering it
witness together the play of a new jet d'eau.  Their counterparts greet
them even in the marble and bronze figures which people the paths and
basins, in the dignified face of an Apollo, in the theatrical air of a
Jupiter, in the worldly ease or studied nonchalance of a Diana or a
Venus.  The stamp of the court, deepened through the joint efforts of
society for a century, is so strong that it is graven on each detail
as on the whole, and on material objects as on matters of the
intellect.

II.  The King's Household.

Its officials and expenses.  - His military family, his stable,
kennel, chapel, attendants, table, chamber, wardrobe, outhouses,
furniture, journeys.

The foregoing is but the framework; before 1789 it was completely
filled up.  "You have seen nothing," says Châteaubriand, "if you have
not seen the pomp of Versailles, even after the disbanding of the
king's household; Louis XIV was always there."[8] It is a swarm of
liveries, uniforms, costumes and equipages as brilliant and as varied
as in a picture.  I should be glad to have lived eight days in this
society.  It was made expressly to be painted, being specially designed
for the pleasure of the eye, like an operatic scene.  But how can we of
to day imagine people for whom life was wholly operatic? At that time
a grandee was obliged to live in great state; his retinue and his
trappings formed a part of his personality; he fails in doing himself
justice if these are not as ample and as splendid as he can make them;
he would be as much mortified at any blank in his household as we with
a hole in our coats.  Should he make any curtailment he would decline
in reputation; on Louis XVI undertaking reforms the court says that he
acts like a bourgeois.  When a prince or princess becomes of age a
household is formed for them; when a prince marries, a household is
formed for his wife; and by a household it must be understood that it
is a pompous display of fifteen or twenty distinct services: stables,
a hunting-train, a chapel, a surgery, the bedchamber and the wardrobe,
a chamber for accounts, a table, pantry, kitchen, and wine-cellars, a
fruitery, a fourrière, a common kitchen, a cabinet, a council;[9] she
would feel that she was not a princess without all this.  There are 274
appointments in the household of the Duc d'Orléans, 210 in that of
Mesdames, 68 in that of Madame Elisabeth, 239 in that of the Comtesse
d'Artois, 256 in that of the Comtesse de Provence, and 496 in that of
the Queen.  When the formation of a household for Madame Royale, one
month old, is necessary, "the queen," writes the Austrian ambassador,
"desires to suppress a baneful indolence, a useless affluence of
attendants, and every practice tending to give birth to sentiments of
pride.  In spite of the said retrenchment the household of the young
princess is to consist of nearly eighty persons destined to the sole
service of her Royal Highness."[10] The civil household of Monsieur
comprises 420 appointments, his military household, 179; that of the
Comte d'Artois 237 and his civil household 456.  -  Three-fourths of
them are for display; with their embroideries and laces, their
unembarrassed and polite expression, their attentive and discreet air,
their easy way of saluting, walking and smiling, they appear well in
an antechamber, placed in lines, or scattered in groups in a gallery;
I should have liked to contemplate even the stable and kitchen array,
the figures filling up the background of the picture.  By these stars
of inferior magnitude we may judge of the splendor of the royal sun.

The king must have guards, infantry, cavalry, body-guards, French
guardsmen, Swiss guardsmen, Cent Suisses, light-horse guards,
gendarmes of the guard, gate-guardsmen, in all, 9,050 men,[11] costing
annually 7,681,000 livres.  Four companies of the French guard, and two
of the Swiss guard, parade every day in the court of the ministers
between the two railings, and when the king issues in his carriage to
go to Paris or Fontainebleau the spectacle is magnificent.  Four
trumpeters in front and four behind, the Swiss guards on one side and
the French guards on the other, form a line as far as it can
reach.[12] The Cent Suisses march ahead of the horsemen in the costume
of the sixteenth century, wearing the halberd, ruff, plumed hat, and
the ample parti-colored striped doublet; alongside of these are the
provost-guard with scarlet facings and gold frogs, and companies of
yeomanry bristling with gold and silver.  The officers of the various
corps, the trumpeters and the musicians, covered with gold and silver
lace, are dazzling to look at; the kettledrum suspended at the saddle-
bow, overcharged with painted and gilded ornaments, is a curiosity for
a glass case; the Negro cymbal-player of the French guards resembles
the sultan of a fairy-tale.  Behind the carriage and alongside of it
trot the body-guards, with sword and carbine, wearing red breeches,
high black boots, and a blue coat sewn with white embroidery, all of
them unquestionable gentlemen; there were twelve hundred of these
selected among the nobles and according to size; among them are the
guards de la manche, still more intimate, who at church and on
ceremonial occasions, in white doublets starred with silver and gold
spangles, holding their damascene partisans in their hands, always
remain standing and turned towards the king "so as to see his person
from all sides." Thus is his protection ensured.  Being a gentleman the
king is a cavalier, and he must have a suitable stable,[13] 1,857
horses, 217 vehicles, 1,458 men whom he clothes, the liveries costing
540,000 francs a year; besides these there were 20 tutors and sub-
tutors, almoners, professors, cooks, and valets to govern, educate and
serve the pages; and again about thirty physicians, apothecaries,
nurses for the sick, intendants, treasurers, workmen, and licensed and
paid merchants for the accessories of the service; in all more than
1,500 men.  Horses to the amount of 250,000 francs are purchased
yearly, and there are stock-stables in Limousin and in Normandy to
draw on for supplies.  287 horses are exercised daily in the two
riding-halls; there are 443 saddle-horses in the small stable, 437 in
the large one, and these are not sufficient for the "vivacity of the
service." The whole cost 4,600,000 livres in 1775, which sum reaches
6,200,000 livres in 1787.[14] Still another spectacle should be seen
with one's own eyes,  -  the pages,[15] the grooms, the laced pupils,
the silver-button pupils, the boys of the little livery in silk, the
instrumentalists and the mounted messengers of the stable.  The use of
the horse is a feudal art; no luxury is more natural to a man of
quality.  Think of the stables at Chantilly, which are palaces.  To
convey an idea of a well-educated and genteel man he was then called
an accomplished cavalier;" in fact his importance was fully manifest
only when he was in the saddle, on a blood-horse like himself.  -
Another genteel taste, an effect of the preceding, is the chase.  It
costs the king from 1,100,000 to 1,200,000 livres a year, and requires
280 horses besides those of the two stables.  A more varied or more
complete equipment could not be imagined: a pack of hounds for the
boar, another for the wolf another for the roe-buck, a cast (of hawks)
for the crow, a cast for the magpie, a cast for merlins, a cast for
hares, a cast for the fields.  In 1783, 179,194 livres are expended for
feeding horses, and 53,412 livres for feeding dogs.[16] The entire
territory, ten leagues around Paris, is a game-preserve; "not a gun
could be fired there;[17] accordingly the plains are seen covered with
partridges accustomed to man, quietly picking up the grain and never
stirring as he passes." Add to this the princes' captaincies,
extending as far as Villers-Cotterets and Orleans; these form an
almost continuous circle around Paris, thirty leagues in
circumference, where game, protected, replaced and multiplied, swarms
for the pleasure of the king.  The park of Versailles alone forms an
enclosure of more than ten leagues.  The forest of Rambouillet embraces
25,000 arpents (30,000 acres).  Herds of seventy-five and eighty stags
are encountered around Fontainebleau.  No true hunter could read the
minute-book of the chase without feeling an impulse of envy.  The wolf-
hounds run twice a week, and they take forty wolves a year.  Between
1743 and 1744 Louis XV runs down 6,400 stags.  Louis XVI writes, August
30th, 1781: "Killed 460 head to day." In 1780 he brings down 20,534
head; in 1781, 20,291; in fourteen years, 189,251 head, besides 1,254
stags, while boars and bucks are proportionate; and it must be noted
that this is all done by his own hand, since his parks approach his
houses.  -  Such, in fine, is the character of a " well-appointed
household," that is to say, provided with its dependencies and
services.  Everything is within reach; it is a complete world in itself
and self-sufficient.  One exalted being attaches to and gathers around
it, with universal foresight and minuteness of detail, every
appurtenance it employs or can possibly employ.  -  Thus, each prince,
each princess has a professional surgery and a chapel;[18] it would
not answer for the almoner who says mass or the doctor who looks after
their health to be obtained outside.  So much stronger is the reason
that the king should have ministrants of this stamp; his chapel
embraces seventy-five almoners, chaplains, confessors, masters of the
oratory, clerks, announcers, carpet-bearers, choristers, copyists, and
composers of sacred music; his faculty is composed of forty-eight
physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, oculists, operators, bone-setters,
distillers, chiropodists and spagyrists (a species of alchemists).  We
must still note his department of profane music, consisting of one
hundred and twenty-eight vocalists, dancers, instrumentalists,
directors and superintendents; his library corps of forty-three
keepers, readers, interpreters, engravers, medallists, geographers,
binders and printers; the staff of ceremonial display, sixty-two
heralds, sword-bearers, ushers and musicians; the staff of
housekeepers, consisting of sixty-eight marshals, guides and
commissaries.  I omit other services in haste to reach the most
important,- that of the table; a fine house and good housekeeping
being known by the table.

There are three sections of the table service;[19] the first for
the king and his younger children; the second, called the little
ordinary, for the table of the grand-master, the grand-chamberlain and
the princes and princesses living with the king; the third, called the
great ordinary, for the grand-master's second table, that of the
butlers of the king's household, the almoners, the gentlemen in
waiting, and that of the valets-de-chambre, in all three hundred and
eighty-three officers of the table and one hundred and three waiters,
at an expense of 2,177,771 livres; besides this there are 389,173
livres appropriated to the table of Madame Elisabeth, and 1,093,547
livres for that of Mesdames, the total being 3,660,491 livres for the
table.  The wine-merchant furnished wine to the amount of 300,000
francs per annum, and the purveyor game, meat and fish at a cost of
1,000,000 livres.  Only to fetch water from Ville-d'Avray, and to
convey servants, waiters and provisions, required fifty horses hired
at the rate of 70,591 francs per annum.  The privilege of the royal
princes and princesses "to send to the bureau for fish on fast days
when not residing regularly at the court," amounts in 1778 to 175,116
livres.  On reading in the Almanach the titles of these officials we
see a Gargantua's feast spread out before us.  The formal hierarchy of
the kitchens, so many grand officials of the table,  -  the butlers,
comptrollers and comptroller-pupils, the clerks and gentlemen of the
pantry, the cup-bearers and carvers, the officers and equerries of the
kitchen, the chiefs, assistants and head-cooks, the ordinary
scullions, turnspits and cellarers, the common gardeners and salad
gardeners, laundry servants, pastry-cooks, plate-changers, table-
setters, crockery-keepers, and broach-bearers, the butler of the table
of the head-butler,  -  an entire procession of broad-braided backs
and imposing round bellies, with grave countenances, which, with order
and conviction, exercise their functions before the saucepans and
around the buffets.

One step more and we enter the sanctuary, the king's apartment.  Two
principal dignitaries preside over this, and each has under him about
a hundred subordinates.  On one side is the grand chamberlain with his
first gentlemen of the bedchamber, the pages of the bedchamber, their
governors and instructors, the ushers of the antechamber, with the
four first valets-de-chambre in ordinary, sixteen special valets
serving in turn, his regular and special cloak-bearers, his barbers,
upholsterers, watch-menders, waiters and porters; on the other hand is
the grand-master of the wardrobe, with the masters of the wardrobe and
the valets of the wardrobe regular and special, the ordinary trunk-
carriers, mail-bearers, tailors, laundry servants, starchers, and
common waiters, with the gentlemen, officers and secretaries in
ordinary of the cabinet, in all 198 persons for domestic service, like
50 many domestic utensils for every personal want, or as sumptuous
pieces of furniture for the decoration of the apartment.  Some of them
fetch the mall and the balls, others hold the mantle and cane, others
comb the king's hair and dry him off after a bath, others drive the
mules which transport his bed, others watch his pet greyhounds in his
room, others fold, put on and tie his cravat, and others fetch and
carry off his easy chair.[20] Some there are whose sole business it is
to fill a corner which must not be left empty.  Certainly, with respect
to ease of deportment and appearance these are the most conspicuous of
all; being so close to the master they are under obligation to appear
well; in such proximity their bearing must not create a discord.  -
Such is the king's household, and I have only described one of his
residences; he has a dozen of them besides Versailles, great and
small, Marly, the two Trianons, la Muette, Meudon, Choisy, Saint-
Hubert, Saint-Germain, Fontainebleau, Compiègne, Saint-Cloud,
Rambouillet,[21] without counting the Louvre, the Tuileries and
Chambord, with their parks and hunting-grounds, their governors,
inspectors, comptrollers, concierges, fountain tenders, gardeners,
sweepers, scrubbers, mole-catchers, wood-rangers, mounted and foot-
guards, in all more than a thousand persons.  Naturally he entertains,
plans and builds, and, in this way expends 3 or 4 millions per
annum.[22] Naturally, also, he repairs and renews his furniture; in
1778, which is an average year, this costs him 1,936,853 livres.
Naturally, also, he takes his guests along with him and defrays their
expenses, they and their attendants; at Choisy, in 1780, there are
sixteen tables with 345 seats besides the distributions; at Saint-
Cloud, in 1785, there are twenty-six tables; "an excursion to Marly of
twenty-one days is a matter of 120,000 livres extra expense;" the
excursion to Fontainebleau has cost as much as 400,000 and 500,000
livres.  His removals, on the average, cost half a million and more per
annum.[23] -  To complete our idea of this immense paraphernalia it
must be borne in mind that the artisans and merchants belonging to
these various official bodies are obliged; through the privileges they
enjoy, to follow the court "on its journeys that it may be provided on
the spot with apothecaries, armorers, gunsmiths, sellers of silken and
woollen hosiery, butchers, bakers, embroiderers, publicans, cobblers,
belt-makers, candle-makers, hatters, pork-dealers, surgeons,
shoemakers, curriers, cooks, pinkers, gilders and engravers, spur-
makers, sweetmeat-dealers, furbishers, old-clothes brokers, glove-
perfumers, watchmakers, booksellers, linen-drapers, wholesale and
retail wine-dealers, carpenters, coarse-jewelry haberdashers,
jewellers, parchment-makers, dealers in trimmings, chicken-roasters,
fish-dealers, purveyors of hay, straw and oats, hardware-sellers,
saddlers, tailors, gingerbread and starch-dealers, fruiterers, dealers
in glass and in violins."[24] One might call it an oriental court
which, to be set in motion, moves an entire world: "when it is to move
one must, if one wants to travel anywhere, take the post in well in
advance." The total is near 4,000 persons for the king's civil
household, 9,000 to 10,000 for his military household, at least 2,000
for those of his relatives, in all 15,000 individuals, at a cost of
between forty and fifty million livres, which would be equal to double
the amount to day, and which, at that time, constituted one-tenth of
the public revenue.[25] We have here the central figure of the
monarchical show.  However grand and costly it may be, it is only
proportionate to its purpose, since the court is a public institution,
and the aristocracy, with nothing to do, devotes itself to filling up
the king's drawing-room.

III.  THE KING'S ASSOCIATES.

The society of the king.  - Officers of the household.  - Invited
guests.

Two causes maintain this affluence, one the feudal form still
preserved, and the other the new centralization just introduced; one
placing the royal service in the hands of the nobles, and the other
converting the nobles into place-hunters.  -  Through the duties of
the palace the highest nobility live with the king, residing under his
roof; the grand-almoner is M. de Montmorency-Laval, bishop of Metz;
the first almoner is M. de Bussuéjouls, bishop of Senlis; the grand-
master of France is the Prince de Condé; the first royal butier is the
Comte d'Escars; the second is the Marquis de Montdragon; the master of
the pantry is the Duke de Brissac; the chief cup-bearer is the Marquis
de Vemeuil; the chief carver is the Marquis de la Chesnaye; the first
gentlemen of the bedchamber are the Ducs de Richelieu, de Durfort, de
Villequier, and de Fleury; the grand-master of the wardrobe is the Duc
de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt; the masters of the wardrobe are the
Comte de Boisgelin and the Marquis de Chauvelin.  The captain of the
falconry is the Chevalier du Forget; the captain of the boar-hunt is
the Marquis d'Ecquevilly; the superintendent of edifices is the Comte
d'Angevillier; the grand-equerry is the Prince de Lambesc; the master
of the hounds is the Duc de Penthièvre; the grand-master of ceremonies
is the Marquis de Brèze; the grand-master of the household is the
Marquis de la Suze; the captains of the guards are the Ducs d'Agen, de
Villery, de Brissac, d'Aguillon, and de Biron, the Princes de Poix, de
Luxembourg and de Soubise.  The provost of the hotel is the Marquis de
Tourzel; the governors of the residences and captains of the chase are
the Duc de Noailles, Marquis de Champcenetz, Baron de Champlost, Duc
de Coigny, Comte de Modena, Comte de Montmorin, Duc de Laval, Comte de
Brienne, Duc d'Orléans, and the Duc de Gèsvres.[26] All these
seigniors are the king's necessary intimates, his permanent and
generally hereditary guests, dwelling under his roof; in close and
daily intercourse with him, for they are "his folks" (gens)[27] and
perform domestic service about his person.  Add to these their equals,
as noble and nearly as numerous, dwelling with the queen, with
Mesdames, with Mme.  Elisabeth, with the Comte and Comtesse de Provence
and the Comte and Comtesse d'Artois.  -  And these are only the heads
of the service; if; below them in rank and office, I count the titular
nobles, I find, among others, 68 almoners or chaplains, 170 gentlemen
of the bedchamber or in waiting, 117 gentlemen of the stable or of the
hunting-train, 148 pages, 114 titled ladies in waiting, besides all
the officers, even to the lowest of the military household, without
counting 1,400 ordinary guards who, verified by the genealogist, are
admitted by virtue of their title to pay their court.[28] Such is the
fixed body of recruits for the royal receptions; the distinctive trait
of this régime is the conversion of its servants into guests, the
drawing room being filled from the anteroom.

Not that the drawing room needs all that to be filled.  Being the
source of all preferment and of every favor, it is natural that it
should overflow[29].  It is the same in our leveling society (in 1875),
where the drawing room of an insignificant deputy, a mediocre
journalist, or a fashionable woman, is full of courtiers under the
name of friends and visitors.  Moreover, here, to be present is an
obligation; it might be called a continuation of ancient feudal
homage; the staff of nobles is maintained as the retinue of its born
general.  In the language of the day, it is called "paying one's duty
to the king." Absence, in the sovereign's eyes, would be a sign of
independence as well as of indifference, while submission as well as
regular attention is his due.  In this respect we must study the
institution from the beginning.  The eyes of Louis XIV go their rounds
at every moment, "on arising or retiring, on passing into his
apartments, in his gardens, .  .  .  nobody escapes, even those who hoped
they were not seen; it was a demerit with some, and the most
distinguished, not to make the court their ordinary sojourn, to others
to come to it but seldom, and certain disgrace to those who never, or
nearly never, came."[30]  Henceforth, the main thing, for the first
personages in the kingdom, men and women, ecclesiastics and laymen,
the grand affair, the first duty in life, the true occupation, is to
be at all hours and in every place under the king's eye, within reach
of his voice and of his glance.  "Whoever," says La Bruyère, "considers
that the king's countenance is the courtier's supreme felicity, that
he passes his life looking on it and within sight of it, will
comprehend to some extent how to see God constitutes the glory and
happiness of the saints." There were at this time prodigies of
voluntary assiduity and subjection.  The Duc de Fronsac, every morning
at seven o'clock, in winter and in summer, stationed himself, at his
father's command, at the foot of the small stairway leading to the
chapel, solely to shake hands with Mme.  de Maintenon on her leaving
for St.  Cyr.[31]  "Pardon me, Madame," writes the Duc de Richelieu to
her, "the great liberty I take in presuming to send you the letter
which I have written to the king, begging him on my knees that he will
occasionally allow me to pay my court to him at Ruel, for I would
rather die than pass two months without seeing him." The true courtier
follows the prince as a shadow follows its body; such, under Louis
XIV, was the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, the master of the hounds.  "He
never missed the king's rising or retiring, both changes of dress
every day, the hunts and the promenades, likewise every day, for ten
years in succession, never sleeping away from the place where the king
rested, and yet on a footing to demand leave, but not to stay away all
night, for he had not slept out of Paris once in forty years, but to
go and dine away from the court, and not be present on the promenade."
-  If; later, and under less exacting masters, and in the general
laxity of the eighteenth century, this discipline is relaxed, the
institution nevertheless subsists;[32] in default of obedience,
tradition, interest and amour-propre suffice for the people of the
court.  To approach the king, to be a domestic in his household, an
usher, a cloak-bearer, a valet, is a privilege that is purchased, even
in 1789, for thirty, forty, and a hundred thousand livres; so much
greater the reason why it is a privilege to form a part of his
society, the most honorable, the most useful, and the most coveted of
all.  -  In the first place, it is a proof of noble birth.  A man, to
follow the king in the chase, and a woman, to be presented to the
queen, must previously satisfy the genealogist, and by authentic
documents, that his or her nobility goes back to the year 1400.  -  In
the next place, it ensures good fortune.  This drawing room is the only
place within reach of royal favors; accordingly, up to 1789, the great
families never stir away from Versailles, and day and night they lie
in ambush.  The valet of the Marshal de Noaillles says to him one night
on closing his curtains,

 "At what hour will Monseigneur be awakened?" "At ten o'clock, if
no one dies during the night."[33]

Old courtiers are still found who, "at the age of eighty, have
passed forty-five on their feet in the antechambers of the king, of
the princes, and of the ministers.  .  .

You have only three things to do," says one of them to a debutant,
"speak well of everybody, ask for every vacancy, and sit down when you
can."

 Hence, the king always has a crowd around him.  The Comtesse du
Barry says, on presenting her niece at court, the first of August,
1773, "the crowd is so great at a presentation, one can scarcely get
through the antechambers."[34] In December, 1774, at Fontainebleau,
when the queen plays at her own table every evening, "the apartment,
though vast, is never empty.  .  .  .  The crowd is so great that one can
talk only to the two or three persons with whom one is playing." The
fourteen apartments, at the receptions of ambassadors are full to
overflowing with seigniors and richly dressed women.  On the first of
January, 1775, the queen "counted over two hundred ladies presented to
her to pay their court.  " In 1780, at Choisy, a table for thirty
persons is spread every day for the king, another with thirty places
for the seigniors, another with forty places for the officers of the
guard and the equerries, and one with fifty for the officers of the
bedchamber.  According to my estimate, the king, on getting up and on
retiring, on his walks, on his hunts, at play, has always around him
at least forty or fifty seigniors and generally a hundred, with as
many ladies, besides his attendants on duty.  At Fontainebleau, in
1756, although "there were neither fêtes nor ballets this year, one
hundred and six ladies were counted." When the king holds a "grand
apartement," when play or dancing takes place in the gallery of
mirrors, four or five hundred guests, the elect of the nobles and of
the fashion, range themselves on the benches or gather around the card
and cavanole tables.[35] This is a spectacle to be seen, not by the
imagination, or through imperfect records, but with our own eyes and
on the spot, to comprehend the spirit, the effect and the triumph of
monarchical culture.  In an elegantly furnished house, the drawing room
is the principal room; and never was one more dazzling than this.
Suspended from the sculptured ceiling peopled with sporting cupids,
descend, by garlands of flowers and foliage, blazing chandeliers,
whose splendor is enhanced by the tail mirrors; the light streams down
in floods on gilding, diamonds, and beaming, arch physiognomies, on
fine busts, and on the capacious, sparkling and garlanded dresses.  The
skirts of the ladies ranged in a circle, or in tiers on the benches,
"form a rich espalier covered with pearls, gold, silver, jewels,
spangles, flowers and fruits, with their artificial blossoms,
gooseberries, cherries, and strawberries," a gigantic animated bouquet
of which the eye can scarcely support the brilliancy.  There are no
black coats, as nowadays, to disturb the harmony.  With the hair
powdered and dressed, with buckles and knots, with cravats and ruffles
of lace, in silk coats and vests of the hues of fallen leaves, or of a
delicate rose tint, or of celestial blue, embellished with gold braid
and embroidery, the men are as elegant as the women.  Men and women,
each is a selection; they all are of the accomplished class, gifted
with every grace which good blood, education, fortune, leisure and
custom can bestow; they are perfect of their kind.  There is no toilet,
no carriage of the head, no tone of the voice, no expression in
language which is not a masterpiece of worldly culture, the distilled
quintessence of all that is exquisitely elaborated by social art.
Polished as the high society of Paris may be, it does not approach
this;[36] compared with the court, it seems provincial.  It is said
that a hundred thousand roses are required to make an ounce of the
unique perfume used by Persian kings; such is this drawing-room, the
frail vial of crystal and gold containing the substance of a human
vegetation.  To fill it, a great aristocracy had to be transplanted to
a hot-house and become sterile in fruit and flowers, and then, in the
royal alembic, its pure sap is concentrated into a few drops of aroma.
The price is excessive, but only at this price can the most delicate
perfumes be manufactured.

IV.  EVERYDAY LIFE IN COURT.

The king's occupations.  - Rising in the morning, mass, dinner,
walks, hunting, supper, play, evening receptions.  - He is always on
parade and in company.

An operation of this kind absorbs him who undertakes it as well as
those who undergo it.  A nobility for useful purposes is not
transformed with impunity into a nobility for ornament;[37] one falls
himself into the ostentation which is substituted for action.  The king
has a court which he is compelled to maintain.  So much the worse if it
absorbs all his time, his intellect, his soul, the most valuable
portion of his active forces and the forces of the State.  To be the
master of a house is not an easy task, especially when five hundred
persons are to be entertained; one must necessarily pass one's life in
public and all the time being on exhibition.  Strictly speaking it is
the life of an actor who is on the stage the entire day.  To support
this load, and work besides, required the temperament of Louis XIV,
the vigor of his body, the extraordinary firmness of his nerves, the
strength of his digestion, and the regularity of his habits; his
successors who come after him grow weary or stagger under the same
load.  But they cannot throw it off; an incessant, daily performance is
inseparable from their position and it is imposed on them like a
heavy, gilded, ceremonial coat.  The king is expected to keep the
entire aristocracy busy, consequently to make a display of himself, to
pay back with his own person, at all hours, even the most private,
even on getting out of bed, and even in his bed.  In the morning, at
the hour named by himself beforehand,[38] the head valet awakens him;
five series of persons enter in turn to perform their duty, and,
"although very large, there are days when the waiting-rooms can hardly
contain the crowd of courtiers."  -  The first admittance is "l'entrée
familière," consisting of the children of France, the princes and
princesses of the blood, and, besides these, the chief physician, the
chief surgeon and other serviceable persons.[39] Next, comes the
"grande entrée;' which comprises the grand-chamberlain, the grand-
master and master of the wardrobe, the first gentlemen of the
bedchamber, the Ducs d'Orleans and de Penthièvre, some other highly
favored seigniors, the ladies of honor and in waiting of the queen,
Mesdames and other princesses, without enumerating barbers tailors and
various descriptions of valets.  Meanwhile spirits of wine are poured
on the king's hands from a service of plate, and he is then handed the
basin of holy water; he crosses himself and repeats a prayer.  Then he
gets out of bed before all these people and puts on his slippers.  The
grand-chamberlain and the first gentleman hand him his dressing-gown;
he puts this on and seats himself in the chair in which he is to put
on his clothes.  At this moment the door opens and a third group
enters, which is the "entrée des brevets;" the seigniors who compose
this enjoy, in addition, the precious privilege of assisting at the
"petite coucher," while, at the same moment there enters a detachment
of attendants, consisting of the physicians and surgeons in ordinary,
the intendants of the amusements, readers and others, and among the
latter those who preside over physical requirements; the publicity of
a royal life is so great that none of its functions can be exercised
without witnesses.  At the moment of the approach of the officers of
the wardrobe to dress him the first gentleman, notified by an usher,
advances to read to the king the names of the grandees who are waiting
at the door: this is the fourth entry called "la chambre," and larger
than those preceding it; for, not to mention the cloak-bearers, gun-
bearers, rug-bearers and other valets it comprises most of the
superior officials, the grand-almoner, the almoners on duty, the
chaplain, the master of the oratory, the captain and major of the
body-guard, the colonel-general and major of the French guards, the
colonel of the king's regiment, the captain of the Cent Suisses, the
grand-huntsman, the grand wolf-huntsman, the grand-provost, the grand-
master and master of ceremonies, the first butler, the grand-master of
the pantry, the foreign ambassadors, the ministers and secretaries of
state, the marshals of France and most of the seigniors and prelates
of distinction.  Ushers place the ranks in order and, if necessary,
impose silence.  Meanwhile the king washes his hands and begins his
toilet.  Two pages remove his slippers; the grand-master of the
wardrobe draws off his night-shirt by the right arm, and the first
valet of the wardrobe by the left arm, and both of them hand it to an
officer of the wardrobe, whilst a valet of the wardrobe fetches the
shirt wrapped up in white taffeta.  Things have now reached the solemn
point, the culmination of the ceremony; the fifth entry has been
introduced, and, in a few moments, after the king has put his shirt
on, all that is left of those who are known, with other house hold
officers waiting in the gallery, complete the influx.  There is quite a
formality in regard to this shirt.  The honor of handing it is reserved
to the sons and grandsons of France; in default of these to the
princes of the blood or those legitimized; in their default to the
grand-chamberlain or to the first gentleman of the bedchamber ; -  the
latter case, it must be observed, being very rare, the princes being
obliged to be present at the king's lever, as were the princesses at
that of the queen.[40] At last the shirt is presented and a valet
carries off the old one; the first valet of the wardrobe and the first
valet-de-chambre hold the fresh one, each by a right and left arm
respectively,[41] while two other valets, during this operation,
extend his dressing-gown in front of him to serve as a screen.  The
shirt is now on his back and the toilet commences.  A valet-de-chambre
supports a mirror before the king while two others on the two sides
light it up, if occasion requires, with flambeaux.  Valets of the
wardrobe fetch the rest of the attire; the grand-master of the
wardrobe puts the vest on and the doublet, attaches the blue ribbon,
and clasps his sword around him; then a valet assigned to the cravats
brings several of these in a basket, while the master of the wardrobe
arranges around the king's neck that which the king selects.  After
this a valet assigned to the handkerchiefs brings three of these on a
silver salver, while the grand-master of the wardrobe offers the
salver to the king, who chooses one.  Finally the master of the
wardrobe hands to the king his hat, his gloves and his cane.  The king
then steps to the side of the bed, kneels on a cushion and says his
prayers, whilst an almoner in a low voice recites the orison
Quoesumus, deus omnipotens.  This done, the king announces the order of
the day, and passes with the leading persons of his court into his
cabinet, where he sometimes gives audience.  Meanwhile the rest of the
company await him in the gallery in order to accompany him to mass
when he comes out.

Such is the lever, a piece in five acts.  -  Nothing could be
contrived better calculated to fill up the void of an aristocratic
life ; a hundred or thereabouts of notable seigniors dispose of a
couple of hours in coming, in waiting, in entering, in defiling, in
taking positions, in standing on their feet, in maintaining an air of
respect and of ease suitable to a superior class of walking gentlemen,
while those best qualified are about to do the same thing over in the
queen's apartment.
[42]  -  The king, however, as an indirect
consequence, suffers the same torture and the same inaction as he
imposes.  He also is playing a part; all his steps and all his gestures
have been determined beforehand; he has been obliged to arrange his
physiognomy and his voice, never to depart from an affable and
dignified air, to award judiciously his glances and his nods, to keep
silent or to speak only of the chase, and to suppress his own
thoughts, if he has any.  One cannot indulge in reverie, meditate or be
absent-minded when one is before the footlights; the part must have
due attention.  Besides, in a drawing room there is only drawing room
conversation, and the master's thoughts, instead of being directed in
a profitable channel, must be scattered about like the holy water of
the court.  All hours of his day are passed in a similar manner, except
three or four during the morning, during which he is at the council or
in his private room; it must be noted, too, that on the days after his
hunts, on returning home from Rambouillet at three o'clock in the
morning, he must sleep the few hours he has left to him.  The
ambassador Mercy,[43] nevertheless, a man of close application, seems
to think it sufficient; he, at least, thinks that "Louis XVI is a man
of order, losing no time in useless things;" his predecessor, indeed,
worked much less, scarcely an hour a day.  Three-quarters of his time
is thus given up to show.  The same retinue surrounds him when he puts
on his boots, when he takes them off; when he changes his clothes to
mount his horse, when he returns home to dress for the evening, and
when he goes to his room at night to retire.  "Every evening for six
years, says a page,[44] either myself or one of my comrades has seen
Louis XVI get into bed in public," with the ceremonial just described.
"It was not omitted ten times to my knowledge, and then accidentally
or through indisposition." The attendance is yet more numerous when he
dines and takes supper; for, besides men there are women present,
duchesses seated on the folding-chairs, also others standing around
the table.  It is needless to state that in the evening when he plays,
or gives a ball, or a concert, the crowd rushes in and overflows.  When
he hunts, besides the ladies on horses and in vehicles, besides
officers of the hunt, of the guards, the equerry, the cloak-bearer,
gun-bearer, surgeon, bone-setter, lunch-bearer and I know not how many
others, all the gentlemen who accompany him are his permanent guests.
And do not imagine that this suite is a small one;[45] the day M. de
Châteaubriand is presented there are four fresh additions, and "with
the utmost punctuality" all the young men of high rank join the king's
retinue two or three times a week.  Not only the eight or ten scenes
which compose each of these days, but again the short intervals
between the scenes are besieged and carried.  People watch for him,
walk by his side and speak with him on his way from his cabinet to the
chapel, between his apartment and his carriage, between his carriage
and his apartment, between his cabinet and his dining room.  And still
more, his life behind the scenes belongs to the public.  If he is
indisposed and broth is brought to him, if he is ill and medicine is
handed to him, "a servant immediately summons the 'grande entrée.' "
Verily, the king resembles an oak stifled by the innumerable creepers
which, from top to bottom, cling to its trunk.  Under a régime of this
stamp there is a want of air; some opening has to be found; Louis XV
availed himself of the chase and of suppers; Louis XVI of the chase
and of lock-making.  And I have not mentioned the infinite detail of
etiquette, the extraordinary ceremonial of the state dinner, the
fifteen, twenty and thirty beings busy around the king's plates and
glasses, the sacramental utterances of the occasion, the procession of
the retinue, the arrival of "la nef" "l'essai des plats," all as if in
a Byzantine or Chinese court.[46] On Sundays the entire public, the
public in general, is admitted, and this is called the "grand
couvert," as complex and as solemn as a high mass.  Accordingly to eat,
to drink, to get up, to go to bed, is to a descendant of Louis XIV, to
officiate.[47] Frederick II, on hearing an explanation of this
etiquette, declared that if he were king of France his first edict
would be to appoint another king to hold court in his place.  In
effect, if there are idlers to salute there must be an idler to be
saluted.  Only one way was possible by which the monarch could have
been set free, and that was to have recast and transformed the French
nobles, according to the Prussian system, into a hard-working regiment
of serviceable functionaries.  But, so long as the court remains what
it is, that is to say, a pompous parade and a drawing room decoration,
the king himself must likewise remain a showy decoration, of little or
no use.

V.  ROYAL DISTRACTIONS.

Diversions of the royal family and of the court.- Louis XV.  - Louis
XVI.

In short, what is the occupation of a well-qualified master of a
house? He amuses himself and he amuses his guests; under his roof a
new pleasure-party comes off daily.  Let us enumerate those of a week.
"Yesterday, Sunday," says the Duc de Luynes, "I met the king going to
hunt on the plain of St.  Denis, having slept at la Muette, where he
intends to remain shooting to day and to-morrow, and to return here on
Tuesday or Wednesday morning, to run down a stag the same day,
Wednesday."[48] Two months after this, "the king," again says M. de
Luynes, "has been hunting every day of the past and of the present
week, except to day and on Sundays, killing, since the beginning,
3,500 partridges." He is always on the road, or hunting, or passing
from one residence to another, from Versailles to Fontainebleau, to
Choisy, to Marly, to la Muette, to Compiègne, to Trianon, to Saint-
Hubert, to Bellevue, to Rambouillet, and, generally, with his entire
court.[49] At Choisy, especially, and at Fontainebleau this company
all lead a merry life.  At Fontainebleau "Sunday and Friday, play;
Monday and Wednesday, a concert in the queen's apartments; Tuesday and
Thursday, the French comedians; and Saturday it is the Italians;"
there is something for every day in the week.  At Choisy, writes the
Dauphine,[50] "from one o'clock (in the afternoon) when we dine, to
one o'clock at night we remain out.  .  .  After dining we play until six
o'clock, after which we go to the theater, which lasts until half-past
nine o'clock, and next, to supper; after this, play again, until one,
and sometimes half-past one, o'clock." At Versailles things are more
moderate; there are but two theatrical entertainments and one ball a
week; but every evening there is play and a reception in the king's
apartment, in his daughters', in his mistress's, in his daughter-in-
law's, besides hunts and three petty excursions a week.  Records show
that, in a certain year, Louis XV slept only fifty-two nights at
Versailles, while the Austrian Ambassador well says that "his mode of
living leaves him not an hour in the day for attention to important
matters."  -  As to Louis XVI, we have seen that he reserves a few
hours of the morning; but the machine is wound up, and go it must.  How
can he withdraw himself from his guests and not do the honors of his
house? Here propriety and custom are tyrants and a third despotism
must be added, still more absolute: the imperious vivacity of a lively
young queen who cannot endure an hour's reading.  -  At Versailles,
three theatrical entertainments and two balls a week, two grand
suppers Tuesday and Thursday, and from time to time, the opera in
Paris.[51] At Fontainebleau, the theater three times a week, and on
other days, play and suppers.  During the following winter the queen
gives a masked ball each week, in which "the contrivance of the
costumes, the quadrilles arranged in ballets, and the daily
rehearsals, take so much time as to consume the entire week." During
the carnival of 1777 the queen, besides her own fêtes, attends the
balls of the Palais-Royal and the masked balls of the opera; a little
later, I find another ball at the abode of the Comtesse Diana de
Polignac, which she attends with the whole royal family, except
Mesdames, and which lasts from half-past eleven o'clock at night until
eleven o'clock the next morning.  Meanwhile, on ordinary days, there is
the rage of faro; in her drawing room "there is no limit to the play;
in one evening the Duc de Chartres loses 8,000 louis.  It really
resembles an Italian carnival; there is nothing lacking, neither masks
nor the comedy of private life; they play, they laugh, they dance,
they dine, they listen to music, they don costumes, they get up
picnics (fêtes-champêtres), they indulge in gossip and gallantries."
"The newest song,"[52] says a cultivated, earnest lady of the
bedchamber, "the current witticism and little scandalous stories,
formed the sole subjects of conversation in the queen's circle of
intimates."  -  As to the king, who is rather dull and who requires
physical exercise, the chase is his most important occupation.  Between
1755 and 1789,[53] he himself, on recapitulating what he had
accomplished, finds "104 boar-hunts, 134 stag-hunts, 266 of bucks, 33
with hounds, and 1,025 shootings," in all 1,562 hunting-days,
averaging at least one hunt every three days; besides this there are a
149 excursions without hunts, and 223 promenades on horseback or in
carriages.  "During four months of the year he goes to Rambouillet
twice a week and returns after having supped, that is to say, at three
o'clock in the morning."[54] This inveterate habit ends in becoming a
mania, and even in something worse.  "The nonchalance," writes Arthur
Young, June 26, 1789, "and even stupidity of the court, is
unparalleled; the moment demands the greatest decision, and yesterday,
while it was actually a question whether he should be a doge of Venice
or a king of France, the king went a hunting!" His journal reads like
that of a gamekeeper's.  On reading it at the most important dates one
is amazed at its entries.  He writes nothing on the days not devoted to
hunting, which means that to him these days are of no account:

July 11, 1789, nothing; M. Necker leaves.

July 12th vespers and benediction; Messieurs de Montmorin, de
Saint-Priest and de la Luzerne leave.

July 13th , nothing.

July 14th , nothing.

July 29th, nothing; M. Necker returns.....

August 4th, stag-hunt in the forest at Marly; took one; go and come
on horseback.

August 13th, audience of the States in the gallery; Te Deum during
the mass below; one stag taken in the hunt at Marly.  .  .

August 25th, complimentary audience of the States; high mass with
the cordons bleus; M. Bailly sworn in; vespers and benediction; state
dinner....

October 5th, shooting near Chatillon; killed 81 head; interrupted
by events; go and come on horseback.

October 6th, leave for Paris at half-past twelve; visit the Hôtel-
de-Ville; sup and rest at the Tuileries.

October 7th nothing; my aunts come and dine.

October 8th, nothing .  .  .

October 12th, nothing; the stag hunted at Port Royal.

Shut up in Paris, held by the crowds, his heart is always with the
hounds.  Twenty times in 1790 we read in his journal of a stag-hunt
occurring in this or that place; he regrets not being on hand.  No
privation is more intolerable to him; we encounter traces of his
chagrin even in the formal protest he draws up before leaving for
Varennes; transported to Paris, shut up in the Tuileries, "where, far
from finding conveniences to which he is accustomed, he has not even
enjoyed the advantages common to persons in easy circumstances," his
crown to him having apparently lost its brightest jewel.


VI.  UPPER CLASS DISTRACTIONS.

Other similar lives.  - Princes and princesses.  - Seigniors of the
court.  - Financiers and parvenus.  - Ambassadors, ministers, governors,
general officers.

As is the general so is his staff; the grandees imitate their
monarch.  Like some costly colossal effigy in marble, erected in the
center of France, and of which reduced copies are scattered by
thousands throughout the provinces, thus does royal life repeat
itself, in minor proportions, even among the remotest gentry.  The
object is to make a parade and to receive; to make a figure and to
pass away time in good society.  -  I find, first, around the court,
about a dozen princely courts.  Each prince or princess of the blood
royal, like the king, has his house fitted up, paid for, in whole or
in part, out of the treasury, its service divided into special
departments, with gentlemen, pages, and ladies in waiting, in brief,
fifty, one hundred, two hundred, and even five hundred appointments.
There is a household of this kind for the queen, one for Madame
Victoire, one for Madame Elisabeth, one for Monsieur, one for Madame,
one for the Comte d'Artois, and one for the Comtesse d'Artois.  There
will be one for Madame Royale, one for the little Dauphin, one for the
Duc de Normandie, all three children of the king, one for the Duc
d'Angoulême, one for the Duc de Berry, both sons of the Comte
d'Artois: children six or seven years of age receive and make a parade
of themselves.  On referring to a particular date, in 1771,[55] I find
still another for the Duc d'Orléans, one for the Duc de Bourbon, one
for the Duchesse, one for the Prince de Condé, one for the Comte de
Clermont, one for the Princess dowager de Conti, one for the Prince de
Conti, one for the Comte de la Marche, one for the Duc de Penthièvre.
-  Each personage, besides his or her apartment under the king's roof
has his or her chateau and palace with his or her own circle, the
queen at Trianon and at Saint-Cloud, Mesdames at Bellevue, Monsieur at
the Luxembourg and at Brunoy, the Comte d'Artois at Meudon and at
Bagatelle, the Duc d'Orléans at the Palais Royal, at Monceaux, at Rancy
and at Villers-Cotterets, the Prince de Conti at the Temple and at
Ile-Adam, the Condés at the Palais-Bourbon and at Chantilly, the Duc
de Penthièvre at Sceaux, Anet and Chateauvilain.  I omit one-half of
these residences.  At the Palais-Royal those who are presented may come
to the supper on opera days.  At Chateauvilain all those who come to
pay court are invited to dinner, the nobles at the duke's table and
the rest at the table of his first gentleman.  At the Temple one
hundred and fifty guests attend the Monday suppers.  Forty or fifty
persons, said the Duchesse de Maine, constitute "a prince's private
company."[56] The princes' train is so inseparable from their persons
that it follows them even into camp.  "The Prince de Condé," says M. de
Luynes, "sets out for the army to-morrow with a large suite: he has
two hundred and twenty-five horses, and the Comte de la Marche one
hundred.  M. le duc d'Orléans leaves on Monday; he has three hundred
and fifty horses for himself and suite."[57] Below the rank of the
king's relatives all the grandees who figure at the court figure as
well in their own residences, at their hotels at Paris or at
Versailles, also in their chateaux a few leagues away from Paris.  On
all sides, in the memoirs, we obtain a foreshortened view of some one
of these seignorial existences.  Such is that of the Duc de Gèvres,
first gentleman of the bedchamber, governor of Paris, and of the Ile-
de-France, possessing besides this the special governorships of Laon,
Soissons, Noyon, Crespy and Valois, the captainry of Mousseaux, also a
pension of 20,000 livres, a veritable man of the court, a sort of
sample in high relief of the people of his class, and who, through his
appointments, his airs, his luxury, his debts, the consideration he
enjoys, his tastes, his occupations and his turn of mind presents to
us an abridgment of the fashionable world.[58] His memory for
relationships and genealogies is surprising; he is an adept in the
precious science of etiquette, and on these two grounds he is an
oracle and much consulted.  "He greatly increased the beauty of his
house and gardens at Saint-Ouen.  At the moment of his death," says the
Duc de Luynes, "he had just added twenty-five arpents to it which he
had begun to enclose with a covered terrace.  .  .  .  He had quite a
large household of gentlemen, pages, and domestic of various kinds,
and his expenditure was enormous.  .  .  .  He gave a grand dinner every
day.  .  .  .  He gave special audiences almost daily.  There was no one at
the court, nor in the city, who did not pay his respects to him.  The
ministers, the royal princes themselves did so.  He received company
whilst still in bed.  He wrote and dictated amidst a large assemblage.
.  .  .  His house at Paris and his apartment at Versailles were never
empty from the time be arose till the time he retired." 2 or 300
households at Paris, at Versailles and in their environs, offer a
similar spectacle.  Never is there solitude.  It is the custom in
France, says Horace Walpole, to burn your candle down to its snuff in
public.  The mansion of the Duchesse de Gramont is besieged at day-
break by the noblest seigniors and the noblest ladies.  Five times a
week, under the Duc de Choiseul's roof, the butler enters the drawing
room at ten o'clock in the evening to bestow a glance on the immense
crowded gallery and decide if he shall lay the cloth for fifty, sixty
or eighty persons;[59] with this example before them all the rich
establishments soon glory in providing an open table for all comers.
Naturally the parvenus, the financiers who have purchased or taken the
name of an estate, all those traffickers and sons of traffickers who,
since Law, associate with the nobility, imitate their ways.  And I do
not allude to the Bourets, the Beaujons, the St.  Jameses and other
financial wretches whose paraphernalia effaces that of the princes;
but take a plain associé des fermes, M. d'Epinay, whose modest and
refined wife refuses such excessive display.[60] He had just completed
his domestic arrangements, and was anxious that his wife should take a
second maid; but she resisted; nevertheless, in this curtailed
household,

"the officers, women and valets, amounted to sixteen.  .  .  .  When M.
d'Epinay gets up his valet enters on his duties.  Two lackeys stand by
awaiting his orders.  The first secretary enters for the purpose of
giving an account of the letters received by him and which he has to
open; but he is interrupted two hundred times in this business by all
sorts of people imaginable.  Now it is a horse-jockey with the finest
horses to sell.  .  .  .  Again some saucy girl who calls to bawl out a
piece of music, and on whose behalf some influence has been exerted to
get her into the opera, after giving her a few lessons in good taste
and teaching her what is proper in French music.  This young lady has
been made to wait to ascertain if I am still at home.  .  .  .  I get up
and go out.  Two lackeys open the folding doors to let me make it
through this eye of a needle, while two servants bawl out in the ante-
chamber, 'Madame, gentlemen, Madame!' All form a line, the gentlemen
consisting of dealers in fabrics, in instruments, jewellers, hawkers,
lackeys, shoeblacks, creditors, in short everything imaginable that is
most ridiculous and annoying.  The clock strikes twelve or one before
this toilet matter is over, and the secretary, who, doubtless, knows
by experience the impossibility of rendering a detailed statement of
his business, hands to his master a small memorandum informing him
what he must say in the assembly of fermiers."

Indolence, disorder, debts, ceremony, the tone and ways of the
patron, all seems a parody of the real thing.  We are beholding the
last stages of aristocracy.  And yet the court of M. d'Epinay is a
miniature resemblance of that of the king.

So much more essential is it that the ambassadors, ministers and
general officers who represent the king should display themselves in a
grandiose manner.  No circumstance rendered the ancient régime so
brilliant and more oppressive; in this, as in all the rest, Louis XIV
is the principal originator of evil as of good.  The policy which
fashioned the court prescribed ostentation.

"A display of dress, table, equipages, buildings and play was made
purposely to please; these afforded opportunities for entering into
conversation with him.  The contagion had spread from the court into
the provinces and to the armies, where people of any position were
esteemed only in proportion to their table and magnificence."[61]

During the year passed by the Marshal de Belle-Isle at Frankfort,
on account of the election of Charles VI, he expended 750,000 livres
in journeys, transportations, festivals and dinners, in constructing a
kitchen and dining-hall, and besides all this, 150,000 livres in
snuff-boxes, watches and other presents; by order of Cardinal Fleury,
so economical, he had in his kitchens one hundred and one
officials.[62] At Vienna, in 1772, the ambassador, the Prince de
Rohan, had two carriages costing together 40,000 livres, forty horses,
seven noble pages, six gentlemen, five secretaries, ten musicians,
twelve footmen, and four grooms whose gorgeous liveries each cost
4,000 livres, and the rest in proportion.[63] We are familiar with the
profusion, the good taste, the exquisite dinners, and the admirable
ceremonial display of the Cardinal de Bernis in Rome.  "He was called
the king of Rome, and indeed he was such through his magnificence and
in the consideration he enjoyed.  .  .  .  His table afforded an idea of
what is possible.  .  .  In festivities, ceremonies and illuminations he
was always beyond comparison." He himself remarked, smiling, "I keep a
French inn on the cross-roads of Europe."[64] Accordingly their
salaries and indemnities are two or three times more ample than at the
present day.  "The king gives 50,000 crowns to the great embassies.  The
Duc de Duras received even 200,000 livres per annum for that of
Madrid, also, besides this, 100,000 crowns gratuity, 50,000 livres for
secret service; and he had the loan of furniture and effects valued at
400,000 and 500,000 livres, of which he kept one-half."[65] The
outlays and salaries of the ministers are similar.  In 1789, the
Chancellor gets 120,080 livres salary and the Keeper of the Seals
135,000.  " M. de Villedeuil, as Secretary of State, was to have had
180,670 livres, but as he represented that this sum would not cover
his expenses, his salary was raised to 226,000 livres, everything
included."[66] Moreover, the rule is, that on retiring from office the
king awards them a pension of 20,000 livres and gives a dowry of
200,000 livres to their daughters.  This is not excessive considering
the way they live.  "They are obliged to maintain such state in their
households, for they cannot enrich themselves by their places.  All
keep open table at Paris three days in the week, and at Fontainebleau
every day."[67] M. de Lamoignon being appointed Chancellor with a
salary of 100,000 livres, people at once declare that he will be
ruined;[68] "for he has taken all the officials of M. d'Aguesseau's
kitchen, whose table alone cost 80,000 livres.  The banquet he gave at
Versailles to the first council held by him cost 6,000 livres, and he
must always have seats at table, at Versailles and at Paris, for
twenty persons." At Chambord,[69] Marshal de Saxe always has two
tables, one for sixty, and the other for eighty persons; also four
hundred horses in his stables, a civil list of more than 100,000
crowns, a regiment of Uhlans for his guard, and a theater costing over
600,000 livres, while the life he leads, or which is maintained around
him, resembles one of Rubens's bacchanalian scenes.  As to the special
and general provincial governors we have seen that, when they reside
on the spot, they fulfill no other duty than to entertain; alongside
of them the intendant, who alone attends to business, likewise
receives, and magnificently, especially for the country of a States-
General.  Commandants, lieutenants-general, the envoys of the central
government throughout, are equally induced by habit and propriety, as
well as by their own lack of occupation, to maintain a drawing-room;
they bring along with them the elegance and hospitality of Versailles.
If the wife follows them she becomes weary and "vegetates in the midst
of about fifty companions, talking nothing but commonplace, knitting
or playing lotto, and sitting three hours at the dinner table." But
"all the military men, all the neighboring gentry and all the ladies
in the town," eagerly crowd to her balls and delight in commending
"her grace, her politeness, her equality."[70] These sumptuous habits
prevail even among people of secondary position.  By virtue of
established usage colonels and captains entertain their subordinates
and thus expend "much beyond their salaries."[71] This is one of the
reasons why regiments are reserved for the sons of the best families,
and companies in them for wealthy gentlemen.  The vast royal tree,
expanding so luxuriantly at Versailles, sends forth its offshoots to
overrun France by thousands, and to bloom everywhere, as at
Versailles, in bouquets of finery and of drawing room sociability.

VII.  PROVINCIAL NOBILITY.

Prelates, seigniors and minor provincial nobles.  - The feudal
aristocracy transformed into a drawing room group.

Following this pattern, and as well through the effect of
temperature, we see, even in remote provinces, all aristocratic
branches having a flourishing social life.  Lacking other employment,
the nobles exchange visits, and the chief function of a prominent
seignior is to do the honors of his house creditably.  This applies as
well to ecclesiastics as to laymen.  The one hundred and thirty-one
bishops and archbishops, the seven hundred abbés-commendatory, are all
men of the world; they behave well, are rich, and are not austere,
while their episcopal palace or abbey is for them a country-house,
which they repair or embellish with a view to the time they pass in
it, and to the company they welcome to it.[72] At Clairvaux, Dom
Rocourt, very affable with men and still more gallant with the ladies,
never drives out except with four horses, and with a mounted groom
ahead; his monks do him the honors of a Monseigneur, and he maintains
a veritable court.  The chartreuse of Val Saint-Pierre is a sumptuous
palace in the center of an immense domain, and the father-procurator,
Dom Effinger, passes his days in entertaining his guests.[73] At the
convent of Origny, near Saint-Quentin,[74] "the abbess has her
domestics and her carriage and horses, and receives men on visits, who
dine in her apartments." The princess Christine, abbess of Remiremont,
with her lady canonesses, are almost always traveling; and yet "they
enjoy themselves in the abbey," entertaining there a good many people
"in the private apartments of the princess, and in the strangers'
rooms."[75] The twenty-five noble chapters of women, and the nineteen
noble chapters of men, are as many permanent drawing-rooms and
gathering places incessantly resorted to by the fine society which a
slight ecclesiastical barrier scarcely divides from the great world
from which it is recruited.  At the chapter of Alix, near Lyons, the
canonesses wear hoopskirts into the choir, "dressed as in the world
outside," except that their black silk robes and their mantles are
lined with ermine.[76] At the chapter of Ottmarsheim in Alsace, "our
week was passed in promenading, in visiting the traces of Roman roads,
in laughing a good deal, and even in dancing, for there were many
people visiting the abbey, and especially talking over dresses." Near
Sarrebuis, the canonesses of Loutre dine with the officers and are
anything but prudish.[77] Numbers of convents serve as agreeable and
respectable asylums for widowed ladies, for young women whose husbands
are in the army, and for young ladies of rank, while the superior,
generally some noble damsel, wields, with ease and dexterity, the
scepter of this pretty feminine world.  But nowhere is the pomp of
hospitality or the concourse greater, than in the episcopal palaces.  I
have described the situation of the bishops; with their opulence,
possessors of the like feudal rights, heirs and successors to the
ancient sovereigns of the territory, and besides all this, men of the
world and frequenters of Versailles, why should they not keep a court?
A Cicé, archbishop of Bordeaux, a Dillon, archbishop of Narbonne, a
Brienne, archbishop of Toulouse, a Castellane, bishop of Mende and
seignior-suzerain of the whole of Gévaudan, an archbishop of Cambrai,
duke of Cambray, seignior-suzerain of the whole of Cambrésis, and
president by birth of the provincial States-General, are nearly all
princes ; why not parade themselves like princes? Hence, they build,
hunt and have their clients and guests, a lever, an antechamber,
ushers, officers, a free table, a complete household, equipages, and,
oftener still, debts, the finishing touch of a grand seignior.  In the
almost regal palace which the Rohans, hereditary bishops of Strasbourg
and cardinals from uncle to nephew, erected for themselves at
Saverne,[78] there are 700 beds, 180 horses, 14 butlers, and 25
valets.  "The whole province assembles there;" the cardinal lodges as
many as two hundred guests at a time, without counting the valets; at
all times there are found under his roof "from twenty to thirty ladies
the most agreeable of the province, and this number is often increased
by those of the court and from Paris.  .  .  .  The entire company sup
together at nine o'clock in the evening, which always looks like a
fête," and the cardinal himself is its chief ornament.  Splendidly
dressed, fine-looking, gallant, exquisitely polite, the slightest
smile is a grace.  "His face, always beaming, inspired confidence; he
had the true physiognomy of a man expressly designed for pompous
display."

Such likewise is the attitude and occupation of the principal lay
seigniors, at home, in summer, when a love of the charms of fine
weather brings them back to their estates.  For example, Harcourt in
Normandy and Brienne in Champagne are two chateaux the best
frequented.  "Persons of distinction resort to it from Paris, eminent
men of letters, while the nobility of the canton pay there an
assiduous court."[79] There is no residence where flocks of
fashionable people do not light down permanently to dine, to dance, to
hunt, to gossip, to unravel,[80] (parfiler) to play comedy.  We can
trace these birds from cage to cage; they remain a week, a month,
three months, displaying their plumage and their prattle.  From Paris
to Ile-Adam, to Villers-Cotterets, to Frétoy, to Planchette, to
Soissons, to Rheims, to Grisolles, to Sillery, to Braine, to
Balincourt, to Vaudreuil, the Comte and Comtesse de Genlis thus bear
about their leisure, their wit, their gaiety, at the domiciles of
friends whom, in their turn, they entertain at Genlis.  A glance at the
exteriors of these mansions suffices to show that it was the chief
duty in these days to be hospitable, as it was a prime necessity to be
in society.[81] Their luxury, indeed, differs from ours.  With the
exception of a few princely establishments it is not great in the
matter of country furniture; a display of this description is left to
the financiers.  "But it is prodigious in all things which can minister
to the enjoyment of others, in horses, carriages, and in an open
table, in accommodations given even to people not belonging to the
house, in boxes at the play which are lent to friends, and lastly, in
servants, much more numerous than nowadays." Through this mutual and
constant attention the most rustic nobles lose the rust still
encrusting their brethren in Germany or in England.  We find in France
few Squire Western and Barons de Thunder-ten-Troenck; an Alsatian
lady, on seeing at Frankfort the grotesque country squires of
Westphalia, is struck with the contrast.[82] Those of France, even in
distant provinces, have frequented the drawing-rooms of the commandant
and intendant, and have encountered on their visits some of the ladies
from Versailles; hence they always show some familiarity with superior
manners and some knowledge of the changes of fashion and dress." The
most barbarous will descend, with his hat in his hand, to the foot of
his steps to escort his guests, thanking them for the honor they have
done him.  The greatest rustic, when in a woman's presence, dives down
into the depths of his memory for some fragment of chivalric
gallantry.  The poorest and most secluded furbishes up his coat of
royal blue and his cross of St.  Louis that he may, when the occasion
offers, tender his respects to his neighbor, the grand seignior, or to
the prince who is passing by.

Thus is the feudal staff wholly transformed, from the lowest to the
highest grades.  Taking in at one glance its 30 or 40,000 palaces,
mansions, manors and abbeys, what a brilliant and engaging scene
France presents! She is one vast drawing-room, and I detect only
drawing room company.  Everywhere the rude chieftains once possessing
authority have become the masters of households administering favors.
Their society is that in which, before fully admiring a great general,
the question is asked, "is he amiable?" Undoubtedly they still wear
swords, and are brave through pride and tradition, and they know how
to die, especially in duels and according to form.  But worldly traits
have hidden the ancient military groundwork; at the end of the
eighteenth century their genius is to be wellbred and their employment
consists in entertaining or in being entertained.

_____________________________________________________________________

Notes:

[1].  "Mémoires de Laporte" (1632).  "M. d'Epernon came to Bordeaux,
where he found His Eminence very ill.  He visited him regularly every
morning, having two hundred guards to accompany him to the door of his
chamber." - "Mémoires de Retz." "We came to the audience, M. de
Beaufort and myself; with a corps of nobles which might number three
hundred gentlemen; MM. the princes had with them nearly a thousand
gentlemen." - All the memoirs of the time show on every page that
these escorts were necessary to make or repel sudden attacks.

[2].  Mercier, "Tableau de Paris." IX.  3.

[3].  Leroi, "Histoire de Versailles," Il.  21.  (70,000 fixed
population and 10,000 floating population according to the registers
of the mayoralty.)

[4].  Warroquier, "Etat de la France" (1789).  The list of persons
presented at court between 1779 and 1789, contains 463 men and 414
women.  Vol.  II.  p.  515.

[5].  People were run over almost every day in Paris by the
fashionable vehicles, it being the habit of the great to ride very
fast.

[6].  153,222,827 livres, 10 sous, 3 deniers.  ( "Souvenirs d'un page
de la cour de Louis XVI.," by the Count d'Hézecques, p.  142.) - In
1690, before the chapel and the theater were constructed, it had
already cost 100,000,000, (St.  Simon, XII.  514.  Memoirs of Marinier,
clerk of the king's buildings.)

[7].  Museum of Engravings, National Library.  "Histoire de France
par estampes," passim, and particularly the plans and views of
Versailles, by Aveline; also, "the drawing of a collation given by M.
le Prince in the Labyrinth of Chantilly," Aug.  29, 1687.

[8].  Memoirs, I.  221.  He was presented at court February 19, 1787.

[9].  For these details cf.  Warroquier, vol.  I.  passim.  - Archives
imperiales, O1, 710 bis, the king's household, expenditure of 1771.  -
D'Argenson, February 25, 1752.  - In 1772 three millions are expended
on the installation of the Count d'Artois.  A suite of rooms for Mme.
Adelaide cost 800,000 livres.

[10].  Marie Antoinette, "Correspondance secréte," by d'Arneth and
Geffroy, III.192.  Letter of Mercy, January 25, 1779.  -  Warroquier,
in 1789, mentions only fifteen places in the house-hold of Madame
Royale.  This, along with other indications, shows the inadequacy of
official statements.

[11].  The number ascertainable after the reductions of 1775 and
1776, and before those of 1787.  See Warroquier, vol.  I.  -  Necker,
"Administration des Finances," II.  119.

[12].  "La Maison du Roi en 1786," colored engravings in the Museum
of Engravings.

[13].  Arcchives nationales, O1, 738.  Report by M. Tessier (1780),
on the large and small stables.  The queen's stables comprise 75
vehicles and 330 horses.  These are the veritable figures taken from
secret manuscript reports, showing the inadequacy of official
statements.  The Versailles Almanach of 1775, for instance, states that
there were only 335 men in the stables while we see that in reality
the number was four or five times as many.  - "Previous to all the
reforms, says a witness, I believe that the number of the king's
horses amounted to 3,000." (D'Hézecques, "Souvenirs d'un page de Louis
XVI.," p.  121.

[14].  La Maison du Roi justifiée par un soldat citoyen," (1786)
according to Statements published by the government.  - "La future
maison du roi" (1790).  "The two stables cost in 1786, the larger one
4,207,606 livres, and the smaller 3,509,402 livres, a total of
7,717,058 livres, of which 486,546 were for the purchase of horses.

[15].  On my arrival at Versailles (1786), there were 150 pages, not
including those of the princes of the blood who lived at Paris.  A
page's coat cost 1,500 livres, (crimson velvet embroidered with gold
on all the seams, and a hat with feather and Spanish point lace.)"
D'Hézecques, ibid., 112.

[16].  Archives nationales, O1, 778.  Memorandum on the hunting-train
between 1760 and 1792 and especially the report of 1786.

[17].  Mercier, "Tableau de Paris," vol.  I.  p.  11; vol.  V.  p.  62.  -
D'Hézecques, ibid.  253.  -  "Journal de Louis XVI," published by
Nicolardot, passim.

[18].  Warroquier, vol.  I.  passim.  Household of the Queen: for the
chapel 22 persons, the faculty 6.  That of Monsieur, the chapel 22,
the faculty 21.  That of Madame, the chapel 20, the faculty 9.  That of
the Comte d'Artois, the chapel 20, the faculty 28.  That of the
Comtesse d'Artois, the chapel 19, the faculty 17.  That of the Duc
d'Orléans, the chapel 6, the faculty 19.

[19].  Archives national, O1, Report by M. Mesnard de Choisy,
(March, 1780).  - They cause a reform (August 17, 1780).  - "La Maison
du roi justifiée" (1789), p.  24.  In 1788 the expenses of the table are
reduced to 2,870,999 livres, of which 600,000 livres are appropriated
to Mesdames for their table.

[20].  D'Hézecques, ibid..  212.  Under Louis XVI.  there were two
chair-carriers to the king, who came every morning, in velvet coats
and with swords by their sides, to inspect and empty the object of
their functions; this post was worth to each one 20,000 livres per
annum.

[21].  In 1787, Louis XVI.  either demolishes or orders to be sold,
Madrid, la Muette and Choisy; his acquisitions, however, Saint-Cloud,
Ile-Adam and Rambouillet, greatly surpassing his reforms.

[22].  Necker; "Compte-rendu," II.  452.  -  Archives nationales, 01,
738.  p.62 and 64, O1 2805, O1 736.  -  "La Maison du roi Justifiée"
(1789).  Constructions in 1775, 3,924,400, in 1786, 4,000,000, in 1788,
3,077,000 livres.  -  Furniture in 1788, 1,700,000 livres.

[23].  Here are some of the casual expenses.  (Archives nationales,
O1, 2805).  On the birth of the Duc de Bourgogne in 1751, 604,477
livres.  For the Dauphin's marriage in 1770, 1,267,770 livres.  For the
marriage of the Comte d'Artois in 1773, 2,016,221 livres.  For the
coronation in 1775, 835,862 livre,.  For plays, concerts and balls in
1778, 481,744 livres, and in 1779, 382,986 livres.

[24].  Warroquier, vol.  I.  ibid.,  -   "Marie Antoinette," by
d'Arneth and Geffroy.  Letter of Mercy, Sept.  16, 1773.  "The multitude
of people of various occupations following the king on his travels
resembles the progress of an army."

[25].  The civil households of the king, queen, and Mme.  Elisabeth,
of Mesdames, and Mme.  Royale, 25,700,000.  - To the king's brothers and
sisters-in-law, 8,040,000.  - The king's military household, 7,681,000,
(Necker, "Compte-rendu," II.  119).  From 1774 to 1788 the expenditure
on the households of the king and his family varies from 32 to 36
millions, not including the military household, ("La Maison du roi
justiftiée").  In 1789 the households of the king, queen, Dauphin,
royal children and of Mesdames, cost 25 millions.  - Those of Monsieur
and Madame, 3,656,000; those of the Count and Countess d'Artois,
3,656,000; those of the Dukes de Berri and d'Angoulême, 700,000;
salaries continued to persons formerly in the princes' service,
228,000.  The total is 33,240,000.  - To this must be added the king's
military household and two millions in the princes' appanages.  (A
general account of fixed incomes and expenditure on the first of May,
1789, rendered by the minister of finances to the committee on
finances of the National Assembly.)

[26].  Warroquier, ibid,(1789) vol.  I., passim.

[27].  An expression of the Comte d'Artois on introducing the
officers of his household to his wife.

[28].  The number of light-horsemen and of gendarmes was reduced in
1775 and in 1776; both bodies were suppressed in 1787.

[29].  The President of the 5th French Republic founded by General
de Gaulle is even today the source of numerous appointments of great
importance.  (SR.)

[30].  Saint-Simon, "Mémoires," XVI.  456.  This need of being always
surrounded continues up to the last moment; in 1791, the queen
exclaimed bitterly, speaking of the nobility, "when any proceeding of
ours displeases them they are sulky; no one comes to my table; the
king retires alone; we have to suffer for our misfortunes." (Mme.
Campan, II.  177.)

[31].  Duc de Lévis, "Souvenirs et Portraits," 29.  - Mme.  de
Maintenon, "Correspondance."

[32].  M. de V -  who was promised a king's lieutenancy or command,
yields it to one of Mme.  de Pompadour's protégés, obtaining in lieu of
it the part of the exempt in "Tartuffe," played by the seigniors
before the king in the small cabinet.  (Mme.  de Hausset, 168).  "M.
de V,-  thanked Madame as if she had made him a duke."

[33].  "Paris, Versailles et les provinces au dix-huitième siècle,"
II.  160, 168.  - Mercier, "Tableau de Paris," IV.  150.  - De Ségur,
"Mémoires," I.  16.

[34].  "Marie Antoinette," by D'Arneth and Geffroy, II.  27, 255,
281.  "-- Gustave III." by Geffroy, November, 1786, bulletin of Mme.  de
Staël.  - D'Hézecques, ibid..  231.  - Archives nationales, 01, 736, a
letter by M. Amelot, September 23, 1780.  - De Luynes, XV.  260, 367;
XVI.  163 ladies, of which 42 are in service, appear and courtesy to
the king.  160 men and more than 100 ladies pay their respects to the
Dauphin and Dauphine.

[35].  Cochin.  Engravings of a masked ball, of a dress ball, of the
king and queen at play, of the interior of the theater (1745).
Customes of Moreau (1777).  Mme.  de Genlis, "Dictionaire des
etiquettes," the article parure.

[36].  "The difference between the tone and language of the court
and the town was about as perceptible as that between Paris and the
provinces.  " (De Tilly, "Mémoires," I.  153.)

[37].  The following is an example of the compulsory inactivity of
the nobles  -  a dinner of Queen Marie Leczinska at Fontainebleau: "I
was introduced into a superb hall where I found about a dozen
courtiers promenading about and a table set for as many persons, which
was nevertheless prepared for but one person.  .  .  .  The queen sat
own while the twelve courtiers took their positions in a semi-circle
ten steps from the table; I stood alongside of them imitating their
deferential silence.  Her Majesty began to eat very fast, keeping her
eyes fixed on the plate.  Finding one of the dishes to her taste she
returned to it, and then, running her eye around the circle, she said
"Monsieur de Lowenthal?" - On hearing this name a fine-looking man
advanced, bowing, and replied, "Madame?" - "I find that this ragout is
fricassé chicken."-- "I believe it is' Madame." - On making this
answer, in the gravest manner, the marshal, retiring backwards,
resumed his position, while the queen finished her dinner, never
uttering another word and going back to her room the same way as she
came." (Memoirs of Casanova.)

[38].  "Under Louis XVI, who arose at seven or eight o'clock, the
lever took place at half-past eleven unless hunting or ceremonies
required it earlier." There is the same ceremonial at eleven, again in
the evening on retiring, and also during the day, when he changes his
boots.  (D'Hézecque, 161.)

[39].  Warroquier, I.  94.  Compare corresponding detail under Louis
XVI in Saint-Simon XIII.  88.

[40].  "Marie Antoinette," by d'Arneth and Geffroy, II.  217.

[41].  In all changes of the coat the left arm of the king is
appropriated by the wardrobe and the right arm to the "chambre."

[42].  The queen breakfasts in bed, and "there are ten or twelve
persons present at this first reception or entrée.  .  .  " The grand
receptions taking place at the dressing hour.  "This reception
comprises the princes of the blood, the captains of the guards and
most of the grand-officers." The same ceremony occurs with the chemise
as with the king's shirt.  One winter day Mme.  Campan offers the
chemise to the queen, when a lady of honor enters, removes her gloves
and takes the chemise in her hands.  A movement at the door and the
Duchess of Orleans comes in, takes off her gloves, and receives the
chemise.  Another movement and it is the Comtesse d'Artois whose
privilege it is to hand the chemise.  Meanwhile the queen sits there
shivering with her arms crossed on her breast and muttering, "It is
dreadful, what importunity! " (Mme.  Campan, II.  217; III.  309-316).

[43].  "Marie Antoinette," by d'Arneth and Geffroy, II.  223 (August
15, 1774).

[44].  Count D'Hézecques, ibid., p.  7.

[45].  Duc de Lauzun, "Mémoires," 51.  - Mme.  de Genlis, "Mémoires,"
ch.  XII.: "Our husbands, regularly on that day (Saturday) slept at
Versailles, to hunt the next day with the king."

[46].  The State dinner takes place every Sunday.  - La nef is a
piece of plate at the center of the table containing between scented
cushions, the napkins used by the king.  - The essai is the tasting of
each dish by the gentlemen servants and officers of the table before
the king partakes of it.  And the same with the beverages.  - It
requires four persons to serve the king with a glass of wine and
water.

[47].  When the ladies of the king's court, and especially the
princesses, pass before the king's bed they have to make an obeisance;
the palace officials salute the nef on passing that.  - A priest or
sacristan does the same thing on passing before the altar.

[48].  De Luynes, IX, 75,79, 105.  (August, 1748, October 1748).

[49].  The king is at Marly, and here is a list of the excursions he
is to make before going to Compiègne.  (De Luynes, XIV, 163, May, 1755)
"Sunday, June 1st, to Choisy until Monday evening.  -  Tuesday, the
3rd to Trianon, until Wednesday.  -  Thursday, the 5th, return to
Trianon where he will remain until after supper on Saturday.  -
Monday, the 9th, to Crécy, until Friday, 13th.  -  Return to Crécy the
16th, until the 21st.  -  St.  July 1st to la Muette, the 2nd, to
Compiègne."

[50].  "Marie Antoinette," by d'Arneth and Geffroy, I.  19 (July 12,
1770).  I.  265 (January 23, 1771).  I.  III.  (October 18, 1770).

[51].  Marie Antoinette," by d'Arneth and Geffroy, II, 270 (October
18, 1774).  II, 395 (November 15, 1775).  II, 295 (February 20, 1775).
III, 25 (February 11, 1777).  III, 119 (October 17, 1777).  III, 409
(March 18, 1780).

[52].  Mme.  Campan, I.  147.

[53].  Nicolardot, "Journal de Louis XVI," 129.

[54].  D'Hézecques ibid.  253.  - Arthur Young, I.  215.

[55].  List of pensions paid to members of the royal family in 1771.
Duc d'Orléans, 150,000.  Prince de Condé, 100,000.  Comte de Clermont,
70,000.  Duc de Bourbon, 60,000.  Prince de Conti, 60,000.  Comte de la
Marche, 60,000.  Dowager-Countess de Conti, 50,000.  Duc de Penthièvre,
50,000.  Princess de Lamballe, 50,000.  Duchess de Bourbon, 50,000.
(Archives Nationales.  O1.  710, bis).

[56].  Beugnot, I.  77.  Mme.  de Genlis, "Mémoires," ch.  XVII.  De
Goncourt, "La Femme au dix-huitième siècle," 52.  - Champfort,
"Caractères et Anecdotes."

[57].  De Luynes, XVI.  57 (May, 1757).  In the army of Westphalia the
Count d'Estrées, commander-in-chief; had twenty-seven secretaries, and
Grimm was the twenty-eighth.  - When the Duc de Richelieu set out for
his government of Guyenne he was obliged to have relays of a hundred
horses along the entire road.

[58].  De Luynes, XVI.  186 (October, 1757).

[59].  De Goncourt, ibid., 73, 75.

[60].  Mme.  d'Epinay, "Mémoires." Ed.  Boiteau, I.  306 (1751).

[61].  St.  Simon, XII.  457, and Dangeau, VI.  408.  The Marshal de
Boufflers at the camp of Compiègne (September, 1698) had every night
and morning two tables for twenty and twenty-five persons, besides
extra tables; 72 cooks, 340 domestics, 400 dozens of napkins, 80
dozens of silver plates, 6 dozens of porcelain plates.  Fourteen relays
of horses brought fruits and liquors daily from Paris; every day an
express brought fish, poultry and game from Ghent, Brussels, Dunkirk,
Dieppe and Calais.  Fifty dozens bottles of wine were drunk on ordinary
days and eighty dozens during the visits of the king and the princes.

[62].  De Luynes, XIV.  149.

[63].  Abbé Georgel, "Mémoires," 216.

[64].  Sainte-Beuve, "Causeries du lundi," VIII.  63, the texts of
two witnesses, MM. de Genlis and Roland.

[65].  De Luynes, XV.  455, and XVI.  219 (1757).  "The Marshal de
Belle-Isle contracted an indebtedness amounting to 1,200,000 livres,
one-quarter of it for building great piles of houses for his own
pleasure and the rest in the king's service.  The king, to indemnify
him, gives him 400,000 livres on the salt revenue, and 80,000 livres
income on the company privileged to refine the precious metals."

[66].  Report of fixed incomes and expenditures, May 1st, 1789, p.
633.  - These figures, it must be noted, must be doubled to have their
actual equivalent.

[67].  Mme.  de Genlis, "Dict.  des Etiquettes," I.  349.

[68].  Barbier, "Journal," III, 211 (December, 1750).

[69].  Aubertin, "L'Esprit public au dix-huitième siècle," 255.

[70].  Mme.  de Genlis, "Adèle et Théodore." III.  54.

[71].  Duc de Lévis, 68.  The same thing is found, previous to the
late reform, in the English army.  - Cf.  Voltaire, "Entretiens entre A,
B, C," 15th entretien.  "A regiment is not the reward for services but
rather for the sum which the parents of a young man advance in order
that he may go to the provinces for three months in the year and keep
open house."

[72].  Beugnot, I.  79.

[73].  Merlin de Thionville, "Vie et correspondances." Account of
his visit to the chartreuse of Val St.  Pierre in Thierarche.

[74].  Mme.  de Genlis, "Mémoires," ch.  7.

[75].  Mme.  d'Oberkirk, I.  15.

[76].  Mme.  de Genlis, 26, ch.  I.  Mme.  d'Oberkirk, I.  62.

[77].  De Lauzun, "Mémoires," 257.

[78].  Marquis de Valfons, "Mémoires," 60.  - De Lévis, 156.  - Mme.
d'Oberkirk, I, 127, II, 360.

[79].  Beugnot, I, 71.  - Hippeau, "Le Gouvernement de Normandie,"
passim.

[80].  An occupation explained farther on, page 145.  -  TR.

[81].  Mme.  de Genlis, " Mémoires," passim.  "Dict.  des Etiquettes,"
I.  348.

[82].  Mme.  d'Oberkirk, I.  395.  - The Baron and Baroness de
Sotenville in Molière are people well brought up although provincial
and pedantic.





CHAPTER II.  DRAWING ROOM LIFE.[1]

I.

Perfect only in France.  - Reasons for this derived from the French
character.  - Reasons derived from the tone of the court.  - This life
becomes more and more agreeable and absorbing.

Similar circumstances have led other aristocracies in Europe to
nearly similar ways and habits.  There also the monarchy has given
birth to the court and the court to a refined society.  But the
development of this rare plant has been only partial.  The soil was
unfavorable and the seed was not of the right sort.  In Spain, the king
stands shrouded in etiquette like a mummy in its wrappings, while a
too rigid pride, incapable of yielding to the amenities of the worldly
order of things, ends in a sentiment of morbidity and in insane
display.[2] In Italy, under petty despotic sovereigns, and most of
them strangers, the constant state of danger and of hereditary
distrust, after having tied all tongues, turns all hearts towards the
secret delights of love and towards the mute gratification of the fine
arts.  In Germany and in England, a cold temperament, dull and
rebellious to culture, keeps man, up to the close of the last century,
within the Germanic habits of solitude, inebriety and brutality.  In
France, on the contrary, all things combine to make the social
sentiment flourish; in this the national genius harmonizes with the
political regime, the plant appearing to be selected for the soil
beforehand.

The Frenchman loves company through instinct, and the reason is
that he does well and easily whatever society calls upon him to do.  He
has not the false shame which renders his northern neighbors awkward,
nor the powerful passions which absorb his neighbors of the south.
Talking is no effort to him, having none of the natural timidity which
begets constraint, and with no constant preoccupation to overcome.  He
accordingly converses at his ease, ever on the alert, and conversation
affords him extreme pleasure.  For the happiness which he requires is
of a peculiar kind: delicate, light, rapid, incessantly renewed and
varied, in which his intellect, his vanity, all his emotional and
sympathetic faculties find nourishment; and this quality of happiness
is provided for him only in society and in conversation.  Sensitive as
he is, personal attention, consideration, cordiality, delicate
flattery, constitute his natal atmosphere, outside which he breathes
with difficulty.  He would suffer almost as much in being impolite as
in encountering impoliteness in others.  For his instincts of
kindliness and vanity there is an exquisite charm in the habit of
being amiable, and this is all the greater because it proves
contagious.  When we afford pleasure to others there is a desire to
please us, and what we bestow in deference is returned in attentions.
In company of this kind one can talk, for to talk is to amuse another
in being oneself amused, a Frenchman finding no pleasure equal to
it.[3] Lively and sinuous, conversation to him is like the flying of a
bird; he wings his way from idea to idea, alert, excited by the
inspiration of others, darting forward, wheeling round and
unexpectedly returning, now up, now down, now skimming the ground, now
aloft on the peaks, without sinking into quagmires, or getting
entangled in the briers, and claiming nothing of the thousands of
objects he slightly grazes but the diversity and the gaiety of their
aspects.

Thus endowed, and thus disposed, he is made for a régime which, for
ten hours a day, brings men together; natural feeling in accord with
the social order of things renders the drawing room perfect.  The king,
at the head of all, sets the example.  Louis XIV had every
qualification for the master of a household: a taste for pomp and
hospitality, condescension accompanied with dignity, the art of
playing on the self-esteem of others and of maintaining his own
position, chivalrous gallantry, tact, and even charms of intellectual
expression.  "His address was perfect;[4] whether it was necessary to
jest, or he was in a playful humor, or deigned to tell a story, it was
ever with infinite grace, and a noble refined air which I have found
only in him." "Never was man so naturally polite,[5] nor of such
circumspect politeness, so powerful by degrees, nor who better
discriminated age, worth, and rank, both in his replies and in his
deportment.  .  .  .  His salutations, more or less marked, but always
slight, were of incomparable grace and majesty.  .  .  .  He was admirable
in the different acknowledgments of salutes at the head of the army
and at reviews.  .  .  .  But especially toward women , there was nothing
like it.  .  .  .  Never did he pass the most insignificant woman without
taking off his hat to her; and I mean chambermaids whom he knew to be
such.  .  .  Never did he chance to say anything disobliging to anybody.
.  .  .  Never before company anything mistimed or venturesome, but even
to the smallest gesture, his walk, his bearing, his features, all were
proper, respectful, noble, grand, majestic, and thoroughly natural."

Such is the model, and, nearly or remotely, it is imitated up to
the end of the ancient régime.  If it undergoes any change, it is only
to become more sociable.  In the eighteenth century, except on great
ceremonial occasions, it is seen descending step by step from its
pedestal.  It no longer imposes "that stillness around it which lets
one hear a fly walk." "Sire," said the Marshal de Richelieu, who had
seen three reigns, addressing Louis XVI, "under Louis XIV no one dared
utter a word; under Louis XV people whispered; under your Majesty they
talk aloud." If authority is a loser, society is the gainer;
etiquette, insensibly relaxed, allows the introduction of ease and
cheerfulness.  Henceforth the great, less concerned in overawing than
in pleasing, cast off stateliness like an uncomfortable and ridiculous
garment, "seeking respect less than applause.  It no longer suffices to
be affable; one has to appear amiable at any cost with one's inferiors
as with one's equals."[6] The French princes, says again a
contemporary lady, "are dying with fear of being deficient in
favors."[7] Even around the throne "the style is free and playful."
The grave and disciplined court of Louis XIV became at the end of the
century, under the smiles of the youthful queen, the most seductive
and gayest of drawing-rooms.  Through this universal relaxation, a
worldly existence gets to be perfect.  "He who has not lived before
1789," says Talleyrand at a later period, "knows nothing of the charm
of living." It was too great; no other way of living was appreciated;
it engrossed man wholly.  When society becomes so attractive, people
live for it alone.

II.  SOCIAL LIFE HAS PRIORITY.

Subordination of it to other interests and duties.  - Indifference
to public affairs.  - They are merely a subject of jest.  - Neglect of
private affairs.  - Disorder in the household and abuse of money.

There is neither leisure nor taste for other matters, even for
things which are of most concern to man, such as public affairs, the
household, and the family.  -  With respect to the first, I have
already stated that people abstain from them, and are indifferent; the
administration of things, whether local or general, is out of their
hands and no longer interests them.  They only allude to it in jest;
events of the most serious consequence form the subject of witticisms.
After the edict of the Abbé Terray, which half ruined the state
creditors, a spectator, too much crowded in the theater, cried out,
"Ah, how unfortunate that our good Abbé Terray is not here to cut us
down one-half I" Everybody laughs and applauds.  All Paris the
following day, is consoled for public ruin by repeating the phrase.  -
Alliances, battles, taxation, treaties, ministries, coups d'état, the
entire history of the country, is put into epigrams and songs.  One
day,[8] in an assembly of young people belonging to the court, one of
them, as the current witticism was passing around, raised his hands in
delight and exclaimed, "How can one help being pleased with great
events, even with disturbances, when they provide us with such amusing
witticisms!" Thereupon the sarcasms circulate, and every disaster in
France is turned into nonsense.  A song on the battle of Hochstaedt was
pronounced poor, and some one in this connection said "I am sorry that
battle was lost  -  the song is so worthless."[9]  -  Even when
eliminating from this trait all that belongs to the sway of impulse
and the license of paradox, there remains the stamp of an age in which
the State is almost nothing and society almost everything.  We may on
this principle divine what order of talent was required in the
ministers.  M. Necker, having given a magnificent supper with serious
and comic opera, "finds that this festivity is worth more to him in
credit, favor, and stability than all his financial schemes put
together.  .  .  .  His last arrangement concerning the vingtième was only
talked about for one day, while everybody is still talking about his
fête; at Paris, as well as in Versailles, its attractions are dwelt on
in detail, people emphatically declaring that Monsieur and Mme.  Necker
are a grace to society."[10] Good society devoted to pleasure imposes
on those in office the obligation of providing pleasures for it.  It
might also say, in a half-serious, half-ironical tone, with Voltaire,
"that the gods created kings only to give fêtes every day, provided
they varied; that life is too short to make any other use of it; that
lawsuits, intrigues, warfare, and the quarrels of priests, which
consume human life, are absurd and horrible things; that man is born
only to enjoy himself;" and that among the essential things we must
put the "superfluous" in the first rank.

According to this, we can easily foresee that they will be as
little concerned with their private affairs as with public affairs.
Housekeeping, the management of property, domestic economy, are in
their eyes vulgar, insipid in the highest degree, and only suited to
an intendant or a butler.  Of what use are such persons if we must have
such cares? Life is no longer a festival if one has to provide the
ways and means.  Comforts, luxuries, the agreeable must flow naturally
and greet our lips of their own accord.  As a matter of course and
without his intervention, a man belonging to this world should find
gold always in his pocket, a handsome coat on his toilet table,
powdered valets in his antechamber, a gilded coach at his door, a fine
dinner on his table, so that he may reserve all his attention to be
expended in favors on the guests in his drawing-room.  Such a mode of
living is not to be maintained without waste, and the domestics, left
to themselves, make the most of it.  What matter is it, so long as they
perform their duties? Moreover, everybody must live, and it is
pleasant to have contented and obsequious faces around one.  -  Hence
the first houses in the kingdom are given up to pillage.  Louis XV, on
a hunting expedition one day, accompanied by the Duc de Choiseul,[11]
inquired of him how much he thought the carriage in which they were
seated had cost.  M. de Choiseul replied that he should consider
himself fortunate to get one like it for 5,000 or 6,000 francs; but,
"His Majesty paying for it as a king, and not always paying cash,
might have paid 8,000 francs for it."  -  "You are wide of the mark,"
rejoined the king, "for this vehicle, as you see it, cost me 30,000
francs.  .  .  .  The robberies in my household are enormous, but it is
impossible to put a stop to them."  -  So the great help themselves as
well as the little, either in money, or in kind, or in services.  There
are in the king's household fifty-four horses for the grand equerry,
thirty-eight of them being for Mme.  de Brionne, the administratrix of
the office of the stables during her son's minority; there are two
hundred and fifteen grooms on duty, and about as many horses kept at
the king's expense for various other persons, entire strangers to the
department.[12] What a nest of parasites on this one branch of the
royal tree! Elsewhere I find Madame Elisabeth, so moderate, consuming
fish amounting to 30,000 francs per annum; meat and game to 70,000
francs; candles to 60,000 francs; Mesdames burn white and yellow
candles to the amount of 215,068 francs; the light for the queen comes
to 157,109 francs.  The street at Versailles is still shown, formerly
lined with stalls, to which the king's valets resorted to nourish
Versailles by the sale of his dessert.  There is no article from which
the domestic insects do not manage to scrape and glean something.  The
king is supposed to drink orgeat and lemonade to the value of 2,190
francs.  "The grand broth, day and night," which Mme.  Royale, aged six
years, sometimes drinks, costs 5,201 francs per annum.  Towards the end
of the preceding reign[13] the femmes-de-chambre enumerate in the
Dauphine's outlay "four pairs of shoes per week; three ells of ribbon
per diem, to tie her dressing-gown; two ells of taffeta per diem, to
cover the basket in which she keeps her gloves and fan." A few years
earlier the king paid 200,000 francs for coffee, lemonade, chocolate,
barley-water, and water-ices; several persons were inscribed on the
list for ten or twelve cups a day, while it was estimated that the
coffee, milk and bread each morning for each lady of the bed-chamber
cost 2,000 francs per annum.[14] We can readily understand how, in
households thus managed, the purveyors are willing to wait.  They wait
so well that often under Louis XV they refuse to provide and "hide
themselves." Even the delay is so regular that, at last; they are
obliged to pay them five per cent.  interest on their advances; at this
rate, in 1778, after all Turgot's economic reforms, the king still
owes nearly 800,000 livres to his wine merchant, and nearly three
millions and a half to his purveyor.[15] The same disorder exists in
the houses which surround the throne.  "Mme.  de Guéménée owes 60,000
livres to her shoe-maker, 16,000 livres to her paper-hanger, and the
rest in proportion." Another lady, whom the Marquis de Mirabeau sees
with hired horses, replies at his look of astonishment, "It is not
because there are not seventy horses in our stables, but none of them
are able to walk to day."[16] Mme.  de Montmorin, on ascertaining that
her husband's debts are greater than his property, thinks she can save
her dowry of 200,000 livres, but is informed that she had given
security for a tailor's bill, which, "incredible and ridiculous to
say, amounts to the sum of 180,000 livres."[17] "One of the decided
manias of these days," says Mme.  d'Oberkirk, "is to be ruined in
everything and by everything." "The two brothers Villemer build
country cottages at from 500,000 to 600,000 livres; one of them keeps
forty horses to ride occasionally in the Bois de Boulogne on
horseback."[18] In one night M. de Chenonceaux, son of M. et Mme.
Dupin, loses at play 700,000 livres.  "M. de Chenonceaux and M. de
Francueil ran through seven or eight millions at this epoch.  "[19]
"The Duc de Lauzun, at the age of twenty-six, after having run through
the capital of 100,000 crowns revenue, is prosecuted by his creditors
for nearly two millions of indebtedness."[20] "M. le Prince de Conti
lacks bread and wood, although with an income of 600,000 livres," for
the reason that "he buys and builds wildly on all sides."[21] Where
would be the pleasure if these people were reasonable? What kind of a
seignior is he who studies the price of things? And how can the
exquisite be reached if one grudges money? Money, accordingly, must
flow and flow on until it is exhausted, first by the innumerable
secret or tolerated bleedings through domestic abuses, and next in
broad streams of the master's own prodigality, through structures,
furniture, toilets, hospitality, gallantry, and pleasures.  The Comte
d'Artois, that he may give the queen a fête, demolishes, rebuilds,
arranges, and furnishes Bagatelle from top to bottom, employing nine
hundred workmen, day and night, and, as there is no time to go any
distance for lime, plaster, and cut stone, he sends patrols of the
Swiss guards on the highways to seize, pay for, and immediately bring
in all carts thus loaded.[22] The Marshal de Soubise, entertaining the
king one day at dinner and over night, in his country house, expends
200,000 livres.[23] Mme.  de Matignon makes a contract to be furnished
every day with a new head-dress at 24,000 livres per annum.  Cardinal
de Rohan has an alb bordered with point lace, which is valued at more
than 100,000 livres, while his kitchen utensils are of massive
silver.[24]  -  Nothing is more natural, considering their ideas of
money; hoarded and piled up, instead of being a fertilizing stream, it
is a useless marsh exhaling bad odors.  The queen, having presented the
Dauphin with a carriage whose silver-gilt trappings are decked with
rubies and sapphires, naively exclaims, "Has not the king added
200,000 livres to my treasury? That is no reason for keeping
them!"[25]  They would rather throw it out of the window.  Which was
actually done by the Marshal de Richelieu with a purse he had given to
his grandson, and which the lad, not knowing how to use, brought back
intact.  Money, on this occasion, was at least of service to the
passing street-sweeper that picked it up.  But had there been no
passer-by to pick it up, it would have been thrown into the river.  One
day Mme.  de B - , being with the Prince de Conti, hinted that she
would like a miniature of her canary bird set in a ring.  The Prince
offers to have it made.  His offer is accepted, but on condition that
the miniature be set plain and without jewels.  Accordingly the
miniature is placed in a simple rim of gold.  But, to cover over the
painting, a large diamond, made very thin, serves as a glass.  Mme.  de
B - , having returned the diamond, "M. le Prince de Conti had it
ground to powder which he used to dry the ink of the note he wrote to
Mme.  de B -  on the subject." This pinch of powder cost 4 or 5,000
livres, but we may divine the turn and tone of the note.  The extreme
of profusion must accompany the height of gallantry, the man of the
world being so much the more important according to his contempt for
money.

III.  UNIVERSAL PLEASURE SEEKING.

Moral divorce of husband and wife.  - Gallantry.  - Separation of
parents and children.  - Education, its object and omissions.  - The
tone of servants and purveyors.  - Pleasure seeking universal.

In a drawing room the woman who receives the least attention from a
man is his own wife, and she returns the compliment.  Hence at a time
like this, when people live for society and in society, there is no
place for conjugal intimacy.  -   Moreover, when a married couple
occupy an exalted position they are separated by custom and decorum.
Each party has his or her own household, or at least their own
apartments, servants, equipage, receptions and distinct society, and,
as entertainment entails ceremony, they stand towards each other in
deference to their rank on the footing of polite strangers.  They are
each announced in each other's apartment; they address each other
"Madame, Monsieur," and not alone in public, but in private; they
shrug their shoulders when, sixty leagues out from Paris, they
encounter in some old chateau a provincial wife ignorant enough to say
"my dear " to her husband before company.[26]  -  Already separated at
the fireside, the two lives diverge beyond it at an ever increasing
radius.  The husband has a government of his own: his private command,
his private regiment, his post at court, which keeps him absent from
home; only in his declining years does his wife consent to follow him
into garrison or into the provinces.[27] And rather is this the case
because she is herself occupied, and as seriously as himself; often
with a position near a princess, and always with an important circle
of company which she must maintain.  At this epoch woman is as active
as man,[28] following the same career, and with the same resources,
consisting of the flexible voice, the winning grace, the insinuating
manner, the tact, the quick perception of the right moment, and the
art of pleasing, demanding, and obtaining; there is not a lady at
court who does not bestow regiments and benefices.  Through this right
the wife has her personal retinue of solicitors and protégés, also,
like her husband, her friends, her enemies, her own ambitions,
disappointments, and rancorous feeling; nothing could be more
effectual in the disruption of a household than this similarity of
occupation and this division of interests.  -  The tie thus loosened
ends by being sundered under the ascendancy of opinion.  "It looks well
not to live together," to grant each other every species of tolerance,
and to devote oneself to society.  Society, indeed, then fashions
opinion, and through opinion it creates the morals which it requires.

Toward the middle of the century the husband and wife lodged under
the same roof, but that was all.  "They never saw each other, one never
met them in the same carriage; they are never met in the same house;
nor, with very good reason, are they ever together in public." Strong
emotions would have seemed odd and even "ridiculous;" in any event
unbecoming; it would have been as unacceptable as an earnest remark
"aside" in the general current of light conversation.  Each has a duty
to all, and for a couple to entertain each other is isolation; in
company there is no right to the tête-à-tête.[29] It was hardly
allowed for a few days to lovers.[30] And even then it was regarded
unfavorably; they were found too much occupied with each other.  Their
preoccupation spread around them an atmosphere of "constraint and
ennui; one had to be upon one's guard and to check oneself." They were
"dreaded." The exigencies of society are those of an absolute king,
and admit of no partition.  "If morals lost by this, society was
infinitely the gainer," says M. de Bezenval, a contemporary; "having
got rid of the annoyances and dullness caused by the husbands'
presence, the freedom was extreme; the coquetry both of men and women
kept up social vivacity and daily provided piquant adventures." Nobody
is jealous, not even when in love.  "People are mutually pleased and
become attached; if one grows weary of the other, they part with as
little concern as they came together.  Should the sentiment revive they
take to each other with as much vivacity as if it were the first time
they had been engaged.  They may again separate, but they never
quarrel.  As they have become enamored without love, they part without
hate, deriving from the feeble desire they have inspired the advantage
of being always ready to oblige."[31] Appearances, moreover, are
respected.  An uninformed stranger would detect nothing to excite
suspicion.  An extreme curiosity, says Horace Walpole,[32] or a great
familiarity with things, is necessary to detect the slightest intimacy
between the two sexes.  No familiarity is allowed except under the
guise of friendship, while the vocabulary of love is as much
prohibited as its rites apparently are.  Even with Crébillon fils, even
with Laclos, at the most exciting moments, the terms their characters
employ are circumspect and irreproachable.  Whatever indecency there
may be, it is never expressed in words, the sense of propriety in
language imposing itself not only on the outbursts of passion, but
again on the grossness of instincts.  Thus do the sentiments which are
naturally the strongest lose their point and sharpness; their rich and
polished remains are converted into playthings for the drawing room,
and, thus cast to and fro by the whitest hands, fall on the floor like
a shuttlecock.  We must, on this point, listen to the heroes of the
epoch; their free and easy tone is inimitable, and it depicts both
them and their actions.  "I conducted myself," says the Duc de Lauzun,
"very prudently, and even deferentially with Mme.  de Lauzun; I knew
Mme.  de Cambis very openly, for whom I concerned myself very little; I
kept the little Eugénie whom I loved a great deal; I played high, I
paid my court to the king, and I hunted with him with great
punctuality."[33] He had for others, withal, that indulgence of which
he himself stood in need.  "He was asked what he would say if his wife
(whom he had not seen for ten years) should write to him that she had
just discovered that she was enceinte.  He reflected a moment and then
replied, 'I would write, and tell her that I was delighted that heaven
had blessed our union; be careful of your health; I will call and pay
my respects this evening.' " There are countless replies of the same
sort, and I venture to say that, without having read them, one could
not imagine to what a degree social art had overcome natural
instincts.

"Here at Paris," writes Mme.  d'Oberkirk, "I am no longer my own
mistress.  I scarcely have time to talk with my husband and to answer
my letters.  I do not know what women do that are accustomed to lead
this life; they certainly have no families to look after, nor children
to educate." At all events they act as if they had none, and the men
likewise.  Married people not living together live but rarely with
their children, and the causes that disintegrate wedlock also
disintegrate the family.  In the first place there is the aristocratic
tradition, which interposes a barrier between parents and children
with a view to maintain a respectful distance.  Although enfeebled and
about to disappear,[34] this tradition still subsists.  The son says "
Monsieur" to his father; the daughter comes "respectfully" to kiss her
mother's hand at her toilet.  A caress is rare and seems a favor;
children generally, when with their parents, are silent, the sentiment
that usually animates them being that of deferential timidity.  At one
time they were regarded as so many subjects, and up to a certain point
they are so still; while the new exigencies of worldly life place them
or keep them effectually aside.  M. de Talleyrand stated that he had
never slept under the same roof with his father and mother.  And if
they do sleep there, they are not the less neglected.  "I was
entrusted," says the Count de Tilly, "to valets; and to a kind of
preceptor resembling these in more respects than one." During this
time his father ran after women.  "I have known him," adds the young
man, "to have mistresses up to an advanced age; he was always adoring
them and constantly abandoning them." The Duc de Lauzun finds it
difficult to obtain a good tutor for his son; for this reason the
latter writes, "he conferred the duty on one of my late mother's
lackeys who could read and write tolerably well, and to whom the title
of valet-de-chambre was given to insure greater consideration.  They
gave me the most fashionable teachers besides; but M. Roch (which was
my mentor's name) was not qualified to arrange their lessons, or to
qualify me to benefit by them.  I was, moreover, like all the children
of my age and of my station, dressed in the handsomest clothes to go
out, and naked and dying with hunger in the house,"[35] and not
through unkindness, but through household oversight, dissipation, and
disorder, attention being given to things elsewhere.  One might easily
count the fathers who, like the Marshal de Belle-Isle, brought up
their sons under their own eyes, and themselves attended to their
education methodically, strictly, and with tenderness.  As to the
girls, they were placed in convents; relieved from this care, their
parents only enjoy the greater freedom.  Even when they retain charge
of them they are scarcely more of a burden to them.  Little Fé1icité de
Saint-Aubin[36] sees her parents "only on their waking up and at meal
times." Their day is wholly taken up; the mother is making or
receiving visits; the father is in his laboratory or engaged in
hunting.  Up to seven years of age the child passes her time with
chambermaids who teach her only a little catechism, "with an infinite
number of ghost stories." About this time she is taken care of; but in
a way which well portrays the epoch.  The Marquise, her mother, the
author of mythological and pastoral operas, has a theater built in the
chateau; a great crowd of company resorts to it from Bourbon-Lancy and
Moulins; after rehearsing twelve weeks the little girl, with a quiver
of arrows and blue wings, plays the part of Cupid, and the costume is
so becoming she is allowed to wear it in common during the entire day
for nine months.  To finish the business they send for a dancing-
fencing master, and, still wearing the Cupid costume, she takes
lessons in fencing and in deportment.  "The entire winter is devoted to
playing comedy and tragedy." Sent out of the room after dinner, she is
brought in again only to play on the harpsichord or to declaim the
monologue of Alzire before a numerous assembly.  Undoubtedly such
extravagances are not customary; but the spirit of education is
everywhere the same; that is to say, in the eyes of parents there is
but one intelligible and rational existence, that of society, even for
children, and the attentions bestowed on these are solely with a view
to introduce them into it or to prepare them for it.  Even in the last
years of the ancient régime[37] little boys have their hair powdered,
"a pomatumed chignon (bourse), ringlets, and curls"; they wear the
sword, the chapeau under the arm, a frill, and a coat with gilded
cuffs; they kiss young ladies' hands with the air of little dandies.  A
lass of six years is bound up in a whalebone waist; her large hoop-
petticoat supports a skirt covered with wreaths; she wears on her head
a skillful combination of false curls, puffs, and knots, fastened with
pins, and crowned with plumes, and so high that frequently "the chin
is half way down to her feet"; sometimes they put rouge on her face.
She is a miniature lady, and she knows it; she is fully up in her
part, without effort or inconvenience, by force of habit; the unique,
the perpetual instruction she gets is that on her deportment; it may
be said with truth that the fulcrum of education in this country is
the dancing-master.[38] They could get along with him without any
others; without him the others were of no use.  For, without him, how
could people go through easily, suitably, and gracefully the thousand
and one actions of daily life, walking, sitting down, standing up,
offering the arm, using the fan, listening and smiling, before eyes so
experienced and before such a refined public? This is to be the great
thing for them when they become men and women, and for this reason it
is the thing of chief importance for them as children.  Along with
graces of attitude and of gesture, they already have those of the mind
and of expression.  Scarcely is their tongue loosened when they speak
the polished language of their parents.  The latter amuse themselves
with them and use them as pretty dolls; the preaching of Rousseau,
which, during the last third of the last century, brought children
into fashion, produces no other effect.  They are made to recite their
lessons in public, to perform in proverbs, to take parts in pastorals.
Their sallies are encouraged.  They know how to turn a compliment, to
invent a clever or affecting repartee, to be gallant, sensitive, and
even spirituelle.  The little Duc d'Angoulême, holding a book in his
hand, receives Suffren, whom he addresses thus: "I was reading
Plutarch and his illustrious men.  You could not have entered more
apropos."[39] The children of M. de Sabran, a boy and a girl, one
eight and the other nine, having taken lessons from the comedians
Sainval and Larive, come to Versailles to play before the king and
queen in Voltaire's "Oreste," and on the little fellow being
interrogated about the classic authors, he replies to a lady, the
mother of three charming girls, "Madame, Anacreon is the only poet I
can think of here!" Another, of the same age, replies to a question of
Prince Henry of Prussia with an agreeable impromptu in verse.[40] To
cause witticisms, trivialities, and mediocre verse to germinate in a
brain eight years old, what a triumph for the culture of the day!  It
is the last characteristic of the régime which, after having stolen
man away from public affairs, from his own affairs, from marriage,
from the family, hands him over, with all his sentiments and all his
faculties, to social worldliness, him and all that belong to him.
Below him fine ways and forced politeness prevail, even with his
servants and tradesmen.  A Frontin has a gallant unconstrained air, and
he turns a compliment.[41] An Abigail needs only to be a kept mistress
to become a lady.  A shoemaker is a "monsieur in black," who says to a
mother on saluting the daughter, "Madame, a charming young person, and
I am more sensible than ever of the value of your kindness," on which
the young girl, just out of a convent, takes him for a suitor and
blushes scarlet.  Undoubtedly less unsophisticated eyes would
distinguish the difference between this pinchbeck louis d'or and a
genuine one; but their resemblance suffices to show the universal
action of the central mint-machinery which stamps both with the same
effigy, the base metal and the refined gold.

IV.  ENJOYMENT.

The charm of this life.  - Etiquette in the 18th Century.  - Its
perfection and its resources.  -Taught and prescribed under feminine
authority.

A society which obtains such ascendancy must possess some charm; in
no country, indeed, and in no age has so perfect a social art rendered
life so agreeable.  Paris is the school-house of Europe, a school of
urbanity to which the youth of Russia, Germany, and England resort to
become civilized.  Lord Chesterfield in his letters never tires of
reminding his son of this, and of urging him into these drawing-rooms,
which will remove "his Cambridge rust." Once familiar with them they
are never abandoned, or if one is obliged to leave them, one always
sighs for them.  "Nothing is comparable," says Voltaire,[42] "to the
genial life one leads there in the bosom of the arts and of a calm and
refined voluptuousness; strangers and monarchs have preferred this
repose, so agreeably occupied in it and so enchanting to their own
countries and thrones.  The heart there softens and melts away like
aromatics slowly dissolving in moderate heat, evaporating in
delightful perfumes." Gustavus III, beaten by the Russians, declares
that he will pass his last days in Paris in a house on the boulevards;
and this is not merely complimentary, for he sends for plans and an
estimate.[43] A supper or an evening entertainment brings people two
hundred leagues away.  Some friends of the Prince de Ligne "leave
Brussels after breakfast, reach the opera in Paris just in time to see
the curtain rise, and, after the spectacle is over, return immediately
to Brussels, traveling all night."  -  Of this delight, so eagerly
sought, we have only imperfect copies, and we are obliged to revive it
intellectually.  It consists, in the first place, in the pleasure of
living with perfectly polite people; there is no enjoyment more
subtle, more lasting, more inexhaustible.  Man's self-esteem or vanity
being infinite, intelligent people are always able to produce some
refinement of attention to gratify it.  Worldly sensibility being
infinite there is no imperceptible shade of it permitting
indifference.  After all, Man is still the greatest source of happiness
or of misery to Man, and in those days this everflowing fountain
brought to him sweetness instead of bitterness.  Not only was it
essential not to offend, but it was essential to please; one was
expected to lose sight of oneself in others, to be always cordial and
good-humored, to keep one's own vexations and grievances in one's own
breast, to spare others melancholy ideas and to supply them with
cheerful ideas.


 "Was any one old in those days? It is the Revolution which brought
old age into the world, Your grandfather, my child,[44] was handsome,
elegant, neat, gracious, perfumed, playful, amiable, affectionate, and
good-tempered to the day of his death.  People then knew how to live
and how to die; there was no such thing as troublesome infirmities.  If
any one had the gout, 'he walked along all the same and made no faces;
people well brought up concealed their sufferings.  There was none of
that absorption in business which spoils a man inwardly and dulls his
brain.  People knew how to ruin themselves without letting it appear,
like good gamblers who lose their money without showing uneasiness or
spite.  A man would be carried half dead to a hunt.  It was thought
better to die at a ball or at the play than in one's bed, between four
wax candles and horrid men in black.  People were philosophers; they
did not assume to be austere, but often were so without making a
display of it.  If one was discreet, it was through inclination and
without pedantry or prudishness.  People enjoyed this life, and when
the hour of departure came they did not try to disgust others with
living.  The last request of my old husband was that I would survive
him as long as possible and live as happily as I could."



When, especially, women are concerned it is not sufficient to be
polite; it is important to be gallant.  Each lady invited by the Prince
de Conti to Ile-Adam "finds a carriage and horses at her disposal; she
is free to give dinners every day in her own rooms to her own
friends."[45] Mme.  de Civrac having to go to the springs, her friends
undertake to divert her on the journey; they keep ahead of her a few
posts, and, at every place where she rests for the night, they give
her a little féte champêtre disguised as villagers and in bourgeois
attire, with bailiff and scrivener, and other masks all singing and
reciting verses.  A lady on the eve of Longchamp, knowing that the
Vicomte de V -  possesses two calèches, makes a request for one of
them; it is disposed of; but he is careful not to decline, and
immediately has one of the greatest elegance purchased to lend it for
three hours; he is only too happy that anybody should wish to borrow
from him, his prodigality appearing amiable but not astonishing.[46]
The reason is that women then were queens in the drawing-room; it is
their right; this is the reason why, in the eighteenth century, they
prescribe the law and the fashion in all things.[47] Having formed the
code of usages, it is quite natural that they should profit by it, and
see that all its prescriptions are carried out.  In this respect any
circle "of the best company " is a superior tribunal, serving as a
court of last appeal.[48] The Maréchale de Luxembourg is an authority;
there is no point of manners which she does not justify with an
ingenious argument.  Any expression, any neglect of the standard, the
slightest sign of pretension or of vanity incurs her disapprobation,
from which there is no appeal, and the delinquent is for ever banished
from refined society.  Any subtle observation, any well-timed silence,
an " oh" uttered in an appropriate place instead of an " Ah," secures
from her, as from M. Talleyrand, a diploma of good breeding which is
the commencement of fame and the promise of a fortune.  Under such an
"instructress" it is evident that deportment, gesture, language, every
act or omission in this mundane sphere, becomes, like a picture or
poem, a veritable work of art; that is to say, infinite in refinement,
at once studied and easy, and so harmonious in its details that its
perfection conceals the difficulty of combining them.

A great lady "receives ten persons with one courtesy, bestowing on
each, through the head or by a glance, all that he is entitled
to;"[49] meaning by this the shade of regard due to each phase of
position, consideration, and birth.  "She has always to deal with
easily irritated amour-propres; consequently the slightest deficiency
in proportion would be promptly detected,"[50] But she is never
mistaken, and never hesitates in these subtle distinctions; with
incomparable tact, dexterity, and flexibility of tone, she regulates
the degrees of her welcome.  She has one "for women of condition, one
for women of quality, one for women of the court, one for titled
women, one for women of historic names, another for women of high
birth personally, but married to men beneath them; another for women
who by marriage have changed a common into a distinguished name;
another still for women of reputable names in the law; and, finally,
another for those whose relief consists chiefly of expensive houses
and good suppers." A stranger would be amazed on seeing with what
certain and adroit steps she circulates among so many watchful
vanities without ever hurting or being hurt.  "She knows how to express
all through the style of her salutations; a varied style, extending
through imperceptible gradations, from the accessory of a single shrug
of the shoulder, almost an impertinence, to that noble and deferential
reverence which so few women, even of the court, know how to do well;
that slow bending forward, with lowered eyes and straightened figure,
gradually recovering and modestly glancing at the person while
gracefully raising the body up, altogether much more refined and more
delicate than words, but very expressive as the means of manifesting
respect."  -  This is but a single action, and very common; there are
a hundred others, and of importance.  Imagine, if it is possible, the
degree of elegance and perfection to which they attained through good
breeding.  I select one at random, a duel between two princes of the
blood, the Comte d'Artois and the Duc de Bourbon; the latter being the
offended party, the former, his superior, had to offer him a
meeting[51],  "As soon as the Comte d'Artois saw him he leaped to the
ground, and walking directly up to him, said to him smiling:
'Monsieur, the public pretends that we are seeking each other.' The
Duc de Bourbon, removing his hat, replied, 'Monsieur, I am here to
receive your orders.'  -  'To execute your own,' returned the Comte
d'Artois, 'but you must allow me to return to my carriage.' He comes
back with a sword, and the duel begins.  After a certain time they are
separated, the seconds deciding that honor is satisfied, 'It is not
for me to express an opinion,' says the Comte d'Artois, 'Monsieur le
Duc de Bourbon is to express his wishes; I am here only to receive his
orders.'  -  'Monsieur,' responds the Duc de Bourbon, addressing the
Comte d'Artois, meanwhile lowering the point of his sword, 'I am
overcome with gratitude for your kindness, and shall never be
insensible to the honor you have done me.' "  -  Could there be a more
just and delicate sentiment of rank, position, and circumstance, and
could a duel be surrounded with more graces? There is no situation,
however thorny, which is not saved by politeness.  Through habit, and a
suitable expression, even in the face of the king, they conciliate
resistance and respect.  When Louis XV, having exiled the Parliament,
caused it to be proclaimed through Mme.  Du Barry that his mind was
made up and that it would not be changed, "Ah, Madame," replied the
Duc de Nivernais, "when the king said that he was looking at
yourself."  -  "My dear Fontenelle," said one of his lady friends to
him, placing her hand on his heart, "the brain is there likewise."
Fontenelle smiled and made no reply.  We see here, even with an
academician, how truths are forced down, a drop of acid in a sugar-
plum; the whole so thoroughly intermingled that the piquancy of the
flavor only enhances its sweetness.  Night after night, in each
drawing-room, sugar-plums of this description are served up, two or
three along with the drop of acidity, all the rest not less exquisite,
but possessing only the sweetness and the perfume.  Such is the art of
social worldliness, an ingenious and delightful art, which, entering
into all the details of speech and of action, transforms them into
graces; which imposes on man not servility and falsehood, but civility
and concern for others, and which, in exchange, extracts for him out
of human society all the pleasure it can afford.

V.  HAPPINESS.

What constitutes happiness in the 18th Century.  - The fascination
of display.  - Indolence, recreation, light conversation.

One can very well understand this kind of pleasure in a summary
way, but how is it to be made apparent? Taken by themselves the
pastimes of society are not to be described; they are too ephemeral;
their charm arises from their accompaniments.  A narrative of them
would be but tasteless dregs, does the libretto of an opera give any
idea of the opera itself?  -  If the reader would revive for himself
this vanished world let him seek for it in those works that have
preserved its externals or its accent, and first in the pictures and
engravings of Watteau, Fragonard and the Saint-Aubins, and then in the
novels and dramas of Voltaire and Marivaux, and even in Collé and
Crébillon fils;[52] then do we see the breathing figures and hear
their voices, What bright, winning, intelligent faces beaming with
pleasure and with the desire to please! What ease in bearing and in
gesture! What piquant grace in the toilet, in the smile, in
vivaciousness of expression, in the control of the fluted voice, in
the coquetry of hidden meanings! How involuntarily we stop to look and
listen! Attractiveness is everywhere, in the small spirituelle heads,
in the slender hands, in the rumpled attire, in the pretty features,
in the demeanor.  The slightest gesture, a pouting or mutinous turn of
the head, a plump little wrist peering from its nest of lace, a
yielding waist bent over an embroidery frame, the rapid rustling of an
opening fan, is a feast for the eyes and the intellect.  It is indeed
all daintiness, a delicate caress for delicate senses, extending to
the external decoration of life, to the sinuous outlines, the showy
drapery, and the refinements of comfort in the furniture and
architecture.  Fill your imagination with these accessories and with
these figures and you will take as much interest in their amusements
as they did.  In such a place and in such company it suffices to be
together to be content.  Their indolence is no burden to them for they
sport with existence.  -  At Chanteloup, the Duc de Choiseul, in
disgrace, finds the fashionable world flocking to see him; nothing is
done and yet no hours of the day are unoccupied.[53]  "The Duchess has
only two hours' time to herself and these two hours are devoted to her
toilet and her letters; the calculation is a simple one: she gets up
at eleven; breakfasts at noon, and this is followed by conversation,
which lasts three or four hours; dinner comes at six, after which
there is play and the reading of the memoirs of Mme.  de Maintenon."
Ordinarily "the company remains together until two o'clock in the
morning." Intellectual freedom is complete.  There is no confusion, no
anxiety.  They play whist and tric-trac in the afternoon and faro in
the evening.  "They do to day what they did yesterday and what they
will do to-morrow; the dinner-supper is to them the most important
affair in life, and their only complaint in the world is of their
digestion.  Time goes so fast I always fancy that I arrived only the
evening before." Sometimes they get up a little race and the ladies
are disposed to take part in it, "for they are all very agile and able
to run around the drawing room five or six times every day." But they
prefer indoors to the open air; in these days true sunshine consists
of candle-light and the finest sky is a painted ceiling; is there any
other less subject to inclemencies or better adapted to conversation
and merriment?  -  They accordingly chat and jest, in words with
present friends, and by letters with absent friends.  They lecture old
Mme.  du Deffant, who is too lively and whom they style the "little
girl"; the young Duchesse, tender and sensible, is "her grandmamma."
As for "grandpapa," M. de Choiseul, "a slight cold keeping him in bed
he has fairy stories read to him all day long, a species of reading to
which we are all given; we find them as probable as modern history.  Do
not imagine that he is unoccupied.  He has had a tapestry frame put up
in the drawing room at which he works, I cannot say with the greatest
skill, but at least with the greatest assiduity.  .  .  .  Now, our
delight is in flying a kite; grandpapa has never seen this sight and
he is enraptured with it." The pastime, in itself, is nothing; it is
resorted to according to opportunity or the taste of the hour, now
taken up and now let alone, and the abbé soon writes: "I do not speak
about our races because we race no more, nor of our readings because
we do not read, nor of our promenades because we do not go out.  What,
then, do we do? Some play billiards, others dominoes, and others
backgammon.  We weave, we ravel and we unravel.  Time pushes us on and
we pay him back."

Other circles present the same spectacle.  Every occupation being an
amusement, a caprice or an impulse of fashion brings one into favor.
At present, it is unraveling, every white hand at Paris, and in the
chateaux, being busy in undoing trimmings, epaulettes and old stuffs,
to pick out the gold and silver threads.  They find in this employment
the semblance of economy, an appearance of occupation, in any event
something to keep them in countenance.  On a circle of ladies being
formed, a big unraveling bag in green taffeta is placed on the table,
which belongs to the lady of the house; immediately all the ladies
call for their bags and "voilà les laquais en l'air"[54] It is all the
rage.  They  unravel every day and several hours in the day; some
derive from it a hundred louis d'or per annum.  The gentlemen are
expected to provide the materials for the work; the Duc de Lauzun,
accordingly, gives to Madame de V -  a harp of natural size covered
with gold thread; an enormous golden fleece, brought as a present from
the Comte de Lowenthal, and which cost 2 or 3,000 francs, brings,
picked to pieces, 5 or 600 francs.  But they do not look into matters
so closely.  Some employment is essential for idle hands, some manual
outlet for nervous activity; a humorous petulance breaks out in the
middle of the pretended work.  One day, when about going out, Madame de
R -  observes that the gold fringe on her dress would be capital for
unraveling, whereupon, with a dash, she cuts one of the fringes off.
Ten women suddenly surround a man wearing fringes, pull off his coat
and put his fringes and laces into their bags, just as if a bold flock
of tomtits, fluttering and chattering in the air, should suddenly dart
on a jay to pluck out its feathers; thenceforth a man who enters a
circle of women stands in danger of being stripped alive.  All this
pretty world has the same pastimes, the men as well as the women.
Scarcely a man can be found without some drawing room accomplishment,
some trifling way of keeping his mind and hands busy, and of filling
up the vacant hour; almost all make rhymes, or act in private
theatricals; many of them are musicians and painters of still-life
subjects.  M. de Choiseul, as we have just seen, works at tapestry;
others embroider or make sword-knots.  M. de Francueil is a good
violinist and makes violins himself; and besides this he is
"watchmaker, architect, turner, painter, locksmith, decorator, cook,
poet, music-composer and he embroiders remarkably well."[55] In this
general state of inactivity it is essential "to know how to be
pleasantly occupied in behalf of others as well as in one's own
behalf." Madame de Pompadour is a musician, an actress, a painter and
an engraver.  Madame Adelaide learns watchmaking and plays on all
instruments from a horn to the jew's-harp; not very well, it is true,
but as well as a queen can sing, whose fine voice is ever only half in
tune.  But they make no pretensions.  The thing is to amuse oneself and
nothing more; high spirits and the amenities of the hour cover all.
Rather read this capital fact of Madame de Lauzun at Chanteloup: "Do
you know," writes the abbé, "that nobody possesses in a higher degree
one quality you would never suspect of her, that of preparing
scrambled eggs? This talent has been buried in the ground, she cannot
recall the time she acquired it; I believe that she had it at her
birth.  Accident made it known, and immediately it was put to test.
Yesterday morning, an hour for ever memorable in the history of eggs,
the implements necessary for this great operation were all brought
out, a heater, some gravy, some pepper and eggs.  Behold Madame de
Lauzun, at first blushing and in a tremor, soon with intrepid courage,
breaking the eggs, beating them up in the pan, turning them over, now
to the right, now to the left, now up and now down, with unexampled
precision and success! Never was a more excellent dish eaten." What
laughter and gaiety in the group comprised in this little scene.  And,
not long after, what madrigals and allusions! Gaiety here resembles a
dancing ray of sunlight; it flickers over all things and reflects its
grace on every object.

VI.  GAIETY.

Gaiety in the 18th Century.  - Its causes and effects.  - Toleration
and license.  - Balls, fêtes, hunts, banquets, pleasures.  - Freedom of
the magistrates and prelates.

The Frenchman's characteristic," says an English traveler in 1785,
"is to be always gay;"[56] and he remarks that he must be so because,
in France, such is the tone of society and the only mode of pleasing
the ladies, the sovereigns of society and the arbiters of good taste.
Add to this the absence of the causes which produce modern dreariness,
and which convert the sky above our heads into one of leaden gloom.
There was no laborious, forced work in those days, no furious
competition, no uncertain careers, no infinite perspectives.  Ranks
were clearly defined, ambitions limited, there was less envy.  Man was
not habitually dissatisfied, soured and preoccupied as he is nowadays.
Few free passes were allowed where there was no right to pass; we
think of nothing but advancement; they thought only of amusing
themselves.  An officer, instead of raging and storming over the army
lists, busies himself in inventing some new disguise for a masked
ball; a magistrate, instead of counting the convictions he has
secured, provides a magnificent supper.  At Paris, every afternoon in
the left avenue of the Palais-Royal, "fine company, very richly
dressed, gather under the large trees;" and in the evening "on leaving
the opera at half-past eight, they go back there and remain until two
o'clock in the morning." They have music in the open air by moonlight,
Gavat singing, and the chevalier de Saint-George playing on the
violin.[57] At Moffontaine, "the Comte de Vaudreuil, Lebrun the poet,
the chevalier de Coigny, so amiable and so gay, Brongniart, Robert,
compose charades every night and wake each other up to repeat them."
At Maupertuis in M. de Montesquiou's house, at Saint-Ouen with the
Marshal de Noailles, at Genevilliers with the Comte de Vandreuil, at
Rainay with the Duc d'Orléans, at Chantilly with the Prince de Condé,
there is nothing but festivity.  We read no biography of the day, no
provincial document, no inventory, without hearing the tinkling of the
universal carnival.  At Monchoix,[58] the residence of the Comte de
Bédé, Châteaubriand's uncle, "they had music, dancing and hunting,
rollicking from morning to night, eating up both capital and income."
At Aix and Marseilles, throughout the fashionable world, with the
Comte de Valbelle, I find nothing but concerts, entertainment, balls,
gallantries, and private theatricals with the Comtesse de Mirabeau for
the leading performer.  At Chateauroux, M. Dupin de Francueil
entertains "a troop of musicians, lackeys, cooks, parasites, horses
and dogs, bestowing everything lavishly, in amusements and in charity,
wishing to be happy himself and everybody else around him," never
casting up accounts, and going to ruin in the most delightful manner
possible.  Nothing arrests this gaiety, neither old age, exile, nor
misfortune ; in 1793 it still subsists in the prisons of the Republic.
A man in place is not then made uncomfortable by his official coat,
puffed up by his situation, obliged to maintain a dignified and
important air, constrained under that assumed gravity which democratic
envy imposes on us as if a ransom.  In 1753,[59] the parliamentarians,
just exiled to Bourges, get up three companies of private theatricals
and perform comedies, while one of them, M. Dupré de Saint-Maur,
fights a rival with the sword.  In 1787,[60] when the entire parliament
is banished to Troyes the bishop, M. de Barral, returns from his
chateau de Saint-Lye expressly to receive it, presiding every evening
at a dinner of forty persons.  "There was no end to the fêtes and
dinners in the town; the president kept open house," a triple quantity
of food being consumed in the eating-houses and so much wood burned in
the kitchens, that the town came near being put on short allowance.
Feasting and jollity is but little less in ordinary times.  A
parliamentarian, like a seignior, must do credit to his fortune.  See
the letters of the President des Brosses concerning society in Dijon;
it reminds us of the abbey of Thélème; then contrast this with the
same town today.[61] In 1744, Monseigneur de Montigny, brother of the
President de Bourbonne, apropos of the king's recovery, entertains the
workmen, tradesmen and artisans in his employ to the number of eighty,
another table being for his musicians and comedians, and a third for
his clerks, secretaries, physicians, surgeons, attorneys and notaries;
the crowd collects around a triumphal car covered with shepherdesses,
shepherds and rustic divinities in theatrical costume; fountains flow
with wine "as if it were water," and after supper the confectionery is
thrown out of the windows.  Each parliamentarian around him has his
"little Versailles, a grand hotel between court and garden," This
town, now so silent, then rang with the clatter of fine equipages.  The
profusion of the table is astonishing, "not only on gala days, but at
the suppers of each week, and I could almost say, of each day."  -
Amidst all these fête-givers, the most illustrious of all, the
President des Brosses, so grave on the magisterial bench, so intrepid
in his remonstrances, so laborious,[62] so learned, is an
extraordinary stimulator of fun (boute-entrain), a genuine Gaul, with
a sparkling, inexhaustible fund of salacious humor: with his friends
he throws off his perruque, his gown, and even something more.  Nobody
dreams of being offended by it; nobody conceives that dress is an
extinguisher, which is true of every species of dress, and of the gown
in particular.  "When I entered society, in 1785," writes a
parliamentarian, "I found myself introduced in a certain way, alike to
the wives and the mistresses of the friends of my family, passing
Monday evening with one, and Tuesday evening with the other.  And I was
only eighteen, and I belonged to a family of magistrates."[63] At
Basville, at the residence of M. de Lamoignon, during the autumnal
vacation and the Whitsuntide holidays, there are thirty persons at the
table daily; there are three or four hunts a week, and the most
prominent magistrates, M. de Lamoignon, M. Pasquier, M. de Rosambo, M.
and Mme.  d'Aguesseau, perform the "Barber of Seville " in the chateau
theater.

As for the cassock, it enjoys the same freedom as the robe.  At
Saverne, at Clairvaux, at Le Mans and at other places, the prelates
wear it as freely as a court dress.  The revolutionary upheaval was
necessary to make it a fixture on their bodies, and, afterwards, the
hostile supervision of an organized party and the fear of constant
danger.  Up to 1789 the sky is too serene and the atmosphere too balmy
to lead them to button it up to the neck.  "Freedom, facilities,
Monsieur l'Abbé," said the Cardinal de Rohan to his secretary,
"without these this life would be a desert."[64] This is what the good
cardinal took care to avoid; on the contrary he had made Saverne an
enchanting world according to Watteau, almost "a landing-place for
Cythera." Six hundred peasants and keepers, ranged in a line a league
long, form in the morning and beat up the surrounding country, while
hunters, men and women, are posted at their stations.  "For fear that
the ladies might be frightened if left alone by themselves, the man
whom they hated least was always left with them to make them feel at
ease," and as nobody was allowed to leave his post before the signal
"it was impossible to be surprised."  -  About one p.m.  "the company
gathered under a beautiful tent, on the bank of a stream or in some
delightful place, where an exquisite dinner was served up, and, as
everybody had to be made happy, each peasant received a pound of meat,
two of bread and half a bottle of wine, they, as well as the ladies,
only asking to begin it all over again." The accommodating prelate
might certainly have replied to scrupulous people along with Voltaire,
that "nothing wrong can happen in good society." In fact, so he did
and in appropriate terms.  One day, a lady accompanied by a young
officer, having come on a visit, and being obliged to keep them over
night, his valet comes and whispers to him that there is no more room.
-  " 'Is the bath-room occupied?'  -  'No, Monseigneur!'  -  'Are
there not two beds there?'  -  'Yes, Monseigneur, but they are both in
the same chamber, and that officer.  .  .  '  -  'Very well, didn't they
come together? Narrow people like you always see something wrong.  You
will find that they will get along well together; there is not the
slightest reason to consider the matter.' " And really nobody did
object, either the officer or the lady.  -  At Granselve, in the Gard,
the Bernardines are still more hospitable.[65] People resort to the
fête of St.  Bernard which lasts a couple of weeks; during this time
they dance, and hunt, and act comedies, "the tables being ready at all
hours." The quarters of the ladies are provided with every requisite
for the toilet; they lack nothing, and it is even said that it was not
necessary for any of them to bring their officer.  -  I might cite
twenty prelates not less gallant, the second Cardinal de Rohan, the
hero of the necklace, M. de Jarente, bishop of Orleans, who keeps the
record of benefices, the young M. de Grimaldi, bishop of Le Mans, M.
de Breteuil, bishop of Montauban, M. de Cicé, archbishop of Bordeaux,
the Cardinal de Montmorency, grand-almoner, M. de Talleyrand, bishop
of Autun, M. de Conzié, bishop of Arras,[66] and, in the first rank,
the Abbé de Saint-Germain des Prés, Comte de Clermont, prince of the
blood, who, with an income of 370,000 francs succeeds in ruining
himself twice, who performs in comedies in his town and country
residences, who writes to Collé in a pompous style and, who, in his
abbatial mansion at Berny, installs Mademoiselle Leduc, a dancer, to
do the honors of his table.  -  There is no hypocrisy.  In the house of
M. Trudaine, four bishops attend the performance of a piece by Collé
entitled "Les accidents ou les Abbés," the substance of which, says
Collé himself, is so free that he did not dare print it along with his
other pieces.  A little later, Beaumarchais, on reading his "Marriage
of Figaro" at the Maréchal de Richelieu's domicile, not expurgated,
much more crude and coarse than it is today, has bishops and
archbishops for his auditors, and these, he says, "after being
infinitely amused by it, did me the honor to assure me that they would
state that there was not a single word in it offensive to good
morals"[67] : thus was the piece accepted against reasons of State,
against the king's will, and through the connivance of all those most
interested in suppressing it.  "There is something more irrational than
my piece, and that is its success," said its author.  The attraction
was too strong.  People devoted to pleasure could not dispense with the
liveliest comedy of the age.  They came to applaud a satire on
themselves; and better still, they themselves acted in it.  -  When a
prevalent taste is in fashion, it leads, like a powerful passion, to
extreme extravagance; the offered pleasure must, at any price, be had.
Faced with a momentary pleasure gratification, it is as a child
tempted by fruit; nothing arrests it, neither the danger to which it
is insensible, nor the social norms as these are established by
itself.

VII.  THEATER, PARADE AND EXTRAVAGANCE.

The principal diversion, elegant comedy.  - Parades and
extravagance.

To divert oneself is to turn aside from oneself, to break loose and
to forget oneself; and to forget oneself fully one must be transported
into another, put himself in the place of another, take his mask and
play his part.  Hence the liveliest of diversions is the comedy in
which one is an actor.  It is that of children who, as authors, actors
and audience, improvise and perform small scenes.  It is that of a
people whose political régime excludes exacting manly tasks (soucis
virile) and who sport with life just like children.  At Venice, in the
eighteenth century, the carnival lasts six months; in France, under
another form, it lasts the entire year.  Less familiar and less
picturesque, more refined and more elegant, it abandons the public
square where it lacks sunshine, to shut itself up in drawing-rooms
where chandeliers are the most suitable for it.  It has retained of the
vast popular masquerade only a fragment, the opera ball, certainly
very splendid and frequented by princes, princesses and the queen; but
this fragment, brilliant as it is, does not suffice; consequently, in
every chateau, in every mansion, at Paris and in the provinces, it
sets up travesties on society and domestic comedies.  -  On welcoming
a great personage, on celebrating the birthday of the master or
mistress of the house, its guests or invited persons perform in an
improvised operetta, in an ingenious, laudatory pastoral, sometimes
dressed as gods, as Virtues, as mythological abstractions, as operatic
Turks, Laplanders and Poles, similar to the figures then gracing the
frontispieces of books, sometimes in the dress of peasants,
pedagogues, peddlers, milkmaids and flower-girls like the fanciful
villagers with which the current taste then fills the stage.  They
sing, they dance, and come forward in turn to recite petty verses
composed for the occasion consisting of so many well-turned
compliments.[68]  -  At Chantilly "the young and charming Duchesse de
Bourbon, attired as a voluptuous Naiad, guides the Comte du Nord, in a
gilded gondola, across the grand canal to the island of Love;" the
Prince de Conti, in his part, serves as pilot to the Grand Duchesse;
other seigniors and ladies "each in allegorical guise," form the
escort,[69] and on these limpid waters, in this new garden of
Alcinous, the smiling and gallant retinue seems a fairy scene in
Tasso.  -  At Vaudreuil, the ladies, advised that they are to be
carried off to seraglios, attire themselves as vestals, while the
high-priest welcomes them with pretty couplets into his temple in the
park; meanwhile over three hundred Turks arrive who force the
enclosure to the sound of music, and bear away the ladies in
palanquins along the illuminated gardens.  At the little Trianon, the
park is arranged as a fair, and the ladies of the court are the
saleswomen, "the queen keeping a café," while, here and there, are
processions and theatricals; this festival costs, it is said, 100,000
livres, and a repetition of it is designed at Choisy attended with a
larger outlay.

Alongside of these masquerades which stop at costume and require
only an hour, there is a more important diversion, the private
theatrical performance, which completely transforms the man, and which
for six weeks, and even for three months, absorbs him entirely at
rehearsals.  Towards 1770,[70] "the rage for it is incredible; there is
not an attorney in his cottage who does not wish to have a stage and
his company of actors." A Bernardine living in Bresse, in the middle
of a wood, writes to Collé that he and his brethren are about to
perform "La Partie de Chasse de Henri IV," and that they are having a
small theater constructed "without the knowledge of bigots and small
minds." Reformers and moralists introduce theatrical art into the
education of children; Mme.  de Genlis composes comedies for them,
considering these excellent for the securing of a good pronunciation,
proper self-confidence and the graces of deportment.  The theater,
indeed, then prepares man for society as society prepares him for the
theater; in either case he is on display, composing his attitude and
tone of voice, and playing a part; the stage and the drawing room are
on an equal footing.  Towards the end of the century everybody becomes
an actor, everybody having been one before.[71] "We hear of nothing
but little theaters set up in the country around Paris." For a long
time those of highest rank set the example.  Under Louis XV.  the Ducs
d'Orléans, de Nivernais, d'Ayen, de Coigny, the Marquises de
Courtenvaux, and d'Entraigues, the Comte de Maillebois, the Duchesse
de Brancas, the Comtesse d'Estrades form, with Madame de Pompadour,
the company of the "small cabinets;" the Due de la Vallière is the
director of them; when the piece contains a ballet the Marquis de
Courtenvaux, the Duc de Beuvron, the Comtes de Melfort and de Langeron
are the titular dancers.[72] "Those who are accustomed to such
spectacles," writes the sedate and pious Duc de Luynes, "agree in the
opinion that it would be difficult for professional comedians to play
better and more intelligently." The passion reaches at last still
higher, even to the royal family.  At Trianon, the queen, at first
before forty persons and then before a more numerous audience,
performs Colette in "Le Devin de Village," Gotte, in "La Gageure
imprévue," Rosine in "Le Barbier de Seville," Pierette in "Le Chasseur
et la Laitière,"[73] while the other comedians consist of the
principal men of the court, the Comte d'Artois, the Comtes d'Adhémar
and de Vaudreuil, the Comtesse de Guiche, and the Canoness de
Polignac.  A theater is formed in Monsieur's domicile; there are two in
the Comte d'Artois's house, two in that of the Duc d'Orléans, two in
the Comte de Clermont's, and one in the Prince de Condé's.  The Comte
de Clermont performs serious characters; the Duc d'Orléans represents,
with completeness and naturalness, peasants and financiers; M. de
Miromesnil, keeper of the seals, is the smartest and most finished of
Scapins; M. de Vaudreuil seems to rival Molé; the Comte de Pons plays
the "Misanthrope" with rare perfection.[74] "More than ten of our
ladies of high rank," writes the Prince de Ligne, "play and sing
better than the best of those I have seen in our theaters." By their
talent judge of their study, assiduity and zeal.  It is evident that
for many of them it is the principal occupation.  In a certain chateau,
that of Saint-Aubin, the lady of the house, to secure a large enough
troupe, enrolls her four chambermaids in it, making her little
daughter, ten years old, play the part of Zaire, and for over twenty
months she has no vacation.  After her bankruptcy, and in her exile,
the first thing done by the Princess de Guéménée was to send for
upholsterers to arrange a theater.  In short, as nobody went out in
Venice without a mask so here nobody comprehended life without the
masqueradings, metamorphoses, representations and triumphs of the
player.

The last trait I have to mention, yet more significant, is the
afterpiece.  Really, in this fashionable circle, life is a carnival as
free and almost as rakish as that of Venice.  The play commonly
terminates with a parade borrowed from La Fontaine's tales or from the
farces of the Italian drama, which are not only pointed but more than
free, and sometimes so broad that they cant be played only before
princes and courtesans;"[75] a morbid palate, indeed, having no taste
for orgeat, instead demanding a dram.  The Duc d'Orléans sings on the
stage the most spicy songs, playing Bartholin in "Nicaise," and Blaise
in "Joconde." "Le Marriage sans Curé," "Leandre grosse," "L'amant
poussif," "Leandre Etalon," are the showy titles of the pieces
composed by Collé "for the amusement of His Highness and the Court."
For one which contains salt there are ten stuffed with strong pepper.
At Brunoy, at the residence of Monsieur, so gross are they[76] the
king regrets having attended; "nobody had any idea of such license;
two women in the auditorium had to go out, and, what is most
extraordinary, they had dared to invite the queen."  -  Gaiety is a
sort of intoxication which draws the cask down to the dregs, and when
the wine is gone it draws on the lees.  Not only at their little
suppers, and with courtesans, but in the best society and with ladies,
they commit the follies of a bagnio.  Let us use the right word, they
are blackguards, and the word is no more offensive to them than the
action.  "For five or six months," writes a lady in 1782,"[77] "the
suppers are followed by a blind man's buff or by a draw-dance, and
they end in general mischievousness, (une polissonnerie générale)."
Guests are invited a fortnight in advance.  "On this occasion they
upset the tables and the furniture; they scattered twenty caraffes of
water about the room; I finally got away at half-past one, wearied
out, pelted with handkerchiefs, and leaving Madame de Clarence hoarse,
with her dress torn to shreds, a scratch on her arm, and a bruise on
her forehead, but delighted that she had given such a gay supper and
flattered with the idea of its being the talk the next day."  -  This
is the result of a craving for amusement.  Under its pressure, as under
the sculptor's thumb, the face of the century becomes transformed and
insensibly loses its seriousness; the formal expression of the
courtier at first becomes the cheerful physiognomy of the worldling,
and then, on these smiling lips, their contours changed, we see the
bold, unbridled grin of the scamp.[78]
___________________________________________________________________

Notes:

[1].  "LA VIE DE SALON" is Taine's title.  In Le Robert & Collins'
Dictionary salon is translated as "lounge" (Brit.) sitting room,
living room, or (cercle littéraire) salon.

[2].  De Loménie, "Beaumarchais et son temps," I.  403.  Letter of
Beaumarchais, (Dec.  24, 1764.)  -  The travels of Mme.  d'Aulnoy and
the letters of Mme.  de Villars.  -  As to Italy see Stendhal, "Rome,
Naples et Florence." - For Germany see the "Mémoires" of the Margrave
of Bareith, also of the Chevalier Lang.  -  For England see my
"Histoire de la litérature Anglaise," vols.  III.  IV.

[3].  Volney, "Tableau du climat et du sol des Etats-Unis
d'Amérique." The leading trait of the French Colonist when compared
with the colonists of other nations, is, according to this writer, the
craving for neighbors and conversation

[4].  Mme.  de Caylus, "Souvenirs," p.  108.

[5].  St.  Simon, 461.

[6].  Duc de Lévis, p.  321.

[7].  Mme.  de Genlis, "Souvenirs de Félicie," p.  160.  - It is
important, however, to call attention to the old-fashioned royal
attitude under Louis XV and even Louis XVI.  "Although I was advised,"
says Alfieri, "that the king never addressed ordinary strangers, I
could not digest the Olympian-Jupiter look with which Louis XV
measured the person presented to him, from head to foot, with such an
impassible air; if a fly should be introduced to a giant, the giant,
after looking at him, would smile, or perhaps remark.  -  'What a
little mite!' In any event, if he said nothing, his face would express
it for him." Alfieri, Mémoires," I.138, 1768.  (Alfieri, Vittorio, born
in Asti in 1749 - † Florence 1803.  Italian poet and playwright.  (SR.)
- See in Mme.  d'Oberkirk's "Mémoires." (II.  349), the lesson
administered by Mme.  Royale, aged seven and a half years, to a lady
introduced to her.

[8].  Champfort, 26, 55; Bachaumont, I.  136 (Sept 7,1762).  One month
after the Parliament had passed a law against the Jesuits, little
Jesuits in wax appeared, with a snail for a base.  "By means of a
thread the Jesuit was made to pop in and out from the shell.  It is all
the rage  -  here is no house without its Jesuit."

[9].  On the other hand, the song on the battle of Rosbach is
charming.

[10].  "Correspondance secrète," by Métra, Imbert, etc., V.  277
(Nov.  17, 1777).  -  Voltaire, "Princesse de Babylone."

[11].  Baron de Bezenval, "Mémoires," II.  206.  An anecdote related
by the Duke.

[12].  Archives nationales, a report by M. Texier (1780).  A report
by M. Mesnard de Chousy (01, 738).

[13].  "Marie Antoinette," by d'Arneth and Geffroy, I.  277 (February
29.  1772).

[14].  De Luynes, XVII.  37 (August, 1758).  -  D'Argenson, February
11, 1753.

[15].  Archives nationales, 01, 738.  Various sums of interest are
paid: 12,969 francs to the baker, 39,631 francs to the wine merchant,
and 173,899 francs to the purveyor.

[16].  Marquis de Mirabeau, "Traité de Population," 60.  -  "Le
Gouvemement de Normandie," by Hippeau, II.  204 (Sept.  30, 1780).

[17].  Mme.  de Larochejacquelein, "Mémoires," p.  30.  -  Mme.
d'Oberkirk, II.  66.

[18].  D'Argenson, January 26, 1753.

[19].  George Sand, "Histoire de ma vie," I.78.

[20].  "Marie Antoinette," by d'Arneth and Geffroy, I.  61 (March 18,
1777).

21.  D'Argenson, January 26, 1753.

[22].  "Marie Antoinette," III.  135, November 19, 1777.

[23].  Barbier, IV., 155.  The Marshal de Soubise had a hunting lodge
to which the king came from time to time to eat an omelet of
pheasants' eggs, costing 157 livres, 10 sous.  (Mercier, XII 192;
according to the statement of the cook who made it.)

[24].  Mme.  d'Oberkirk, I.  129, II.  257.

[25].  Mme.  de Genlis, "Souvenirs de Félicie," 80; and "Théâtre de
l'Education," II.  367.  A virtuous young woman in ten months runs into
debt to the amount of 70,000 francs: "Ten louis for a small table, 15
louis for another, 800 francs for a bureau, 200 francs for a small
writing desk, 300 francs for a large one.  Hair rings, hair glass, hair
chain, hair bracelets, hair clasps, hair necklace, hair box, 9,900
francs," etc.

[26].  Mme.  de Genlis, "Adèle et Théodore," III.  14.

[27].  Mme.  d'Avray, sister of Mme.  de Genlis, sets the example, for
which she is at first much criticized.

[28].  "When I arrived in France M. de Choiseul's reign was just
over.  The woman who seemed nice to him, or could only please his
sister-in-law the Duchesse de Gramont, was sure of being able to
secure the promotion to colonel and lieutenant general of any man they
proposed.  Women were of consequence even in the eyes of the old and of
the clergy; they were thoroughly familiar, to an extraordinary degree,
with the march of events; they knew by heart the characters and habits
of the king's friends and ministers.  One of these, on returning to his
château from Versailles, informed his wife about every thing with
which he had been occupied; at home he says one or two words to her
about his water-color sketches, or remains silent and thoughtful,
pondering over what he has just heard in Parliament.  Our poor ladies
are abandoned to the Society of those frivolous men who, for want of
intellect, have no ambition, and of course no employment (dandies)."
(Stendhal, "Rome, Naples, and Florence," 377.  A narrative by Colonel
Forsyth).

[29].  De Bezenval, 49, 60.  - "Out of twenty seigniors at the court
there are fifteen not living with their wives, and keeping mistresses.
Nothing is so common at Paris among certain people." (Barbier, IV.
496.

[30].  Ne soyez point époux, ne soyez point amant,
Soyez l'homme du jour et vous serez charmant.

[31].  Crébillon, fills.  "La nuit et le moment," IX, 14.

[32].  Horace Walpole's letters (January 15, 1766).  - The Duke de
Brissac, at Louveciennes, the lover of Mme.  du Barry, and passionately
fond of her, always in her society assumed the attitude of a polite
stranger.  (Mme.  Vigée-Lebrun, "Souvenirs," I.  165.)

[33].  De Lauzun, 51.  - Champfort, 39.  - "The Duc de  -  whose wife
had just been the subject of scandal, complained to his mother-in-law:
the latter replied with the greatest coolness, 'Eh, Monsieur, you make
a good deal of talk about nothing.  Your father was much better
company.' " (Mme.  d'Oberkirk, II.  135, 241).  -  "A husband said to
his wife, I allow you everything except princes and lackeys.' He had
it right since these two extremes brought dishonor on account of the
scandal attached to them." (Sénac de Meilhan, "Considérations sur les
moeurs.)  -  On a wife being discovered by a husband, he simply
exclaims, "Madame, what imprudence! Suppose that I was any other man."
(La femme au dix-huitième siècle," 201.)

[34].  See in this relation the somewhat ancient types, especially
in the provinces.  "My mother, my sister, and myself, transformed into
statues by my father's presence, only recover ourselves after he
leaves the room." (Châteaubriand, "Mémoires," I.  17, 28, 130).  -
"Mémoires de Mirabeau," I.  53.) The Marquis said of his father
Antoine: "I never had the honor of kissing the cheek of that venerable
man.  .  .  At the Academy, being two hundred leagues away from him, the
mere thought of him made me dread every youthful amusement which could
be followed by the least unfavorable results."  -  Paternal authority
seems almost as rigid among the middle and lower classes.
("Beaumarchais et son temps," by De Loménie, I.  23.  -  "Vie de mon
père," by Restif de la Bretonne, passim.)

[35].  Sainte-Beuve, "Nouveaux lundis," XII, 13;  -  Comte de Tilly,
"Mémoires," I.  12; Duc de Lauzun, 5.  -  "Beaumarchais," by de
Loménie, II.  299.

[36].  Madame de Genlis, "Mémoires," ch 2 and 3.

[37].  Mme.  d'Oberkirk.  II.  35.  -  This fashion lasts until 1783.
-  De Goncourt, "La femme au dix-huitième siècle, 415,  -  "Les petits
parrains," engraving by Moreau.  -  Berquin, "L'ami des
enfants,"passim.  -  Mme.  de Genlis, "Théâtre de l'Education," passim.

[38].  Lesage, "Gil Blas de Santillane": the discourse of the
dancing-master charged with the education of the son of Count
d'Olivarés.

[39].  "Correspondance." by Métra, XIV.  212; XVI.  109.  -  Mme.
d'Oberkirk.  II, 302.

[40].  De Ségur, I.  297:

Ma naissance n'a rien de neuf,
J'ai suivi la commune régle,
Mais c'est vous qui sortez d'un oeuf,
Car vous êtes un aigle.

Mme.  de Genlis, "Mémoires," ch.  IV.  Mme.  de Genlis wrote verses of
this kind at twelve years of age.

[41].  Already in the Précieuses of Molière, the Marquis de
Mascarille and the Vicomte de Jodelet.  -  And the same in Marivaux,
"L'épreuve, les jeux de l'amour et du hasard," ete.  -  Lesage,
"Crispin rival de son maître."  -  Laclos, "Les liaisons dangéreuses,"
first letter.

[42].  Voltaire, "Princesse de Babylone."

[43].  "Gustave III," by Geffroy, II.  37.  -  Mme.  Vigée-Lebrun, I.
81.

[44].  George Sand, I.  58-60.  A narration by her grandmother, who,
at thirty years of age, married M. Dupin de Francuiel, aged sixty-two.

[45].  Mme.  de Genlis, "Souvenirs de Félicie," 77.  -  Mme.  Campan,
III.  74.  -  Mme.  de Genlis, "Dict.  des Etiquettes," I.  348.

[46].  See an anecdote concerning this species of royalty in "Adèle
et Théodore, I.  69" by Mme.  de Genlis.  -  Mme.  Vigée-Lebrun, I.  156:
"Women ruled then; the Revolution has dethroned them.  .  .  This
gallantry I speak of has entirely disappeared."

[47].  "Women in France to some extent dictate whatever is to be
said and prescribe whatever is to be done in the fashionable world."
("A comparative view," by John Andrews, 1785.)


[48].  Mme.  d'Oberkirk, I.  299.  -  Mme.  de Genlis, "Mémoires," ch.
XI.

[49].  De Tilly, I.  24.

[50].  Necker, "Oeuvres complètes," XV, 259.

[51].  Narrated by M. de Bezenval, a witness of the duel.

[52].  See especially: Saint-Aubin, "Le bal paré," "Le Concert;" -
Moreau, "Les Elégants," "La Vie d'un Seigneur à la mode," the
vignettes of "La nouvelle Héloise;" Beaudouin, "La Toilette," "Le
Coucher de la Mariée;" Lawreince, "Qu'en dit l'abbé? "  -  Watteau,
the first in date and in talent, transposes these customs and depicts
them the better by making them more poetic.  -  Of the rest, reread
"Marianne," by Marivaux; "La Vérité dans le vin," by Collé; "Le coin
du feu," "La nuit et le moment," by Crébillon fils; and two letters in
the "Correspondance inédite" of Mme.  du Deffant, one by the Abbé
Barthélemy and the other by the Chevalier de Boufflers, (I.  258,
341.).

[53].  "Correspondence inédite de Mme.  du Deffant," published by M.
de Saint-Aulaire, I.  235, 258, 296, 302, 363.

[54].  Mme.  de Genlis, "Dict.  des Etiquettes," II.  38.  "Adèle et
Théodore, I, 312, II, 350,  -  George Sand, "Histoire de ma vie," I.
228.  - De Goncourt, p.  111.

[55].  George Sand, I.  59.

[56].  "A comparative view," etc., by John Andrews.

[57].  Mme.  Vigée-Lebrun, I.  15, 154.

[58].  Châteaubriand, I.  34.  - "Mémoires de Mirabeau," passim.  -
George Sand, I.  59, 76.

[59].  Comptes rendus de la société de Berry (1863-1864).

[60].  "Histoire de Troyes pendant la Révolution," by Albert Babeau,
I.  46.

[61].  Foissets, "Le Président des Brosses," 65, 69, 70, 346.  -
"Lettres du Président des Brosses," (ed.  Coulomb), passim.  - Piron
being uneasy concerning his "Ode à Priape," President Bouhier, a man
of great and fine erudition, and the least starched of learned ones,
sent for the young man and said to him, "You are a foolish fellow.  If
any one presses you to know the author of the offence tell him that I
am." (Sainte-Beuve, "Nouveaux Lundis," VII.  414.)

[62].  Foisset, ibid..  185.  Six audiences a week and often two a day
besides his labors as antiquarian, historian, linguist, geographer,
editor and academician.

[63].  "Souvenirs", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de
France.  in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893.

[64].  De Valfons, "Souvenirs," 60.

[65].  Montgaillard (an eye-witness).  "Histoire de France," II.  246.

[66].  M. de Conzié is surprised at four o'clock in the morning by
his rival, an officer in the guards.  "Make no noise," he said to him,
"a dress like yours will be brought to me and I will have a cock made
then we shall be on the same level." A valet brings him his weapons.
He descends into the garden of the mansion, fights with the officer
and disarms him.  ("Correspondance," by Métra, XIV.  May 20, 1783.)  -
"Le Comte de Clermont," by Jules Cousin, passim.  -  "Journal de
Collé," III.  232 (July, 1769).

[67].  De Loménie, "Beaumarchais et son temps, II.  304.

[68].  De Luynes, XVL 161 (September, 1757).  The village festival
given to King Stanislas, by Mme.  de Mauconseil at Bagatelle.  -
Bachaumont, III.  247 (September 7, 1767).  Festival given by the Prince
de Condé.

[69].  "Correspondance," by Métra, XIII.  97 (June 15, 1782), and V.
232 (June 24 and 25, 1777).  -  Mme.  de Genlis "Mémoires," chap.  XIV.

[70].  Bachaumont, November 17, 1770.  -  "Journal de Collé," III.
136 (April 29, 1767).  -  De Montlosier, "Mémoires," I.  43.  "At the
residence of the Commandant (at Clermont) they would have been glad to
enlist me in private theatricals."

[71].  "Correspondance." by Métra, II.  245 (Nov.  18.  1775).

[72].  Julien.  "Histoire du Théâtre de Madame de Pompadour." These
representations last seven years and cost during the winter alone of
1749, 300,000 livres.  -  De Luynes, X.  45.  -  Mme.  de Hausset, 230.

[73].  Mme.  Campan, I.  130.  -  Cf.  with caution, the Mémoires, are
suspect, as they have been greatly modified and arranged by Fleury.  -
De Goncourt, 114.

74.  Jules Cousin, " Le Comte de Clermont," p.21.  -  Mme.  de
Genlis, "Mémoires," chap.  3 and 11.  -  De Goncourt, 114.

[75].  Bachaumont, III.  343 (February 23, 1768) and IV.  174, III.
232.  -  "Journal d Collé," passim.  -  Collé, Laujon and Poisinet are
the principal purveyors for these displays; the only one of merit is
"La Verité dans le Vin." In this piece instead of "Mylord." there was
at first the "bishop of Avranches," and the piece was thus performed
at Villers-Cotterets in the house of the Duc d'Orléans.

[76].  Mme.  d'Oberkirk, II.  82.  -  On the tone of the best society
see "Correspondance" by Métra, I.  50, III.  68, and Bezenval (Ed.
Barrière) 387 to 394.

[77].  Mme.  de Genlis, "Adèle et Théodore," II.  362.

[78].  George Sand, I.  85.  "At my grandmother's I have found boxes
full of couplets, madrigals and biting satires....  I burned some of
them so obscene that I would not dare read them through, and these
written by abbés I had known to my infancy and by a marquis of the
best blood." Among other examples, toned down, the songs on the Bird
and the Shepherdess, may be read in "Correspondance," by Métra.



CHAPTER III.  DISADVANTAGES OF THIS DRAWING ROOM LIFE.

I.

Its Barrenness and Artificiality.  - Return to Nature and sentiment.

MERE pleasure, in the long run, ceases to gratify, and however
agreeable this drawing room life may be, it ends in a certain
hollowness.  Something is lacking without any one being able to say
precisely what that something is; the soul becomes restless, and
slowly, aided by authors and artists, it sets about investigating the
cause of its uneasiness and the object of its secret longings.
Barrenness and artificiality are the two traits of this society, the
more marked because it is more complete, and, in this one, pushed to
extreme, because it has attained to supreme refinement.  In the first
place naturalness is excluded from it; everything is arranged and
adjusted, - decoration, dress, attitude, tone of voice, words, ideas
and even sentiments.  "A genuine sentiment is so rare," said M. de V--
, "that, when I leave Versailles, I sometimes stand still in the
street to see a dog gnaw a bone."[1] Man, in abandoning himself wholly
to society, had withheld no portion of his personality for himself
while decorum, clinging to him like so much ivy, had abstracted from
him the substance of his being and subverted every principle of
activity.

"There was then," says one who was educated in this style,[2] "a
certain way of walking, of sitting down, of saluting, of picking up a
glove, of holding a fork, of tendering any article, in short, a
complete set of gestures and facial expressions, which children had to
be taught at a very early age in order that habit might become a
second nature, and this conventionality formed so important an item in
the life of men and women in aristocratic circles that the actors of
the present day, with all their study, are scarcely able to give us an
idea of it."

 Not only was the outward factitious but, again, the inward; there
was a certain prescribed mode of feeling and of thinking, of living
and of dying.  It was impossible to address a man without placing
oneself at his orders, or a woman without casting oneself at her feet,
Fashion, 'le bon ton,' regulated every important or petty proceeding,
the manner of making a declaration to a woman and of breaking an
engagement, of entering upon and managing a duel, of treating an
equal, an inferior and a superior.  If any one failed in the slightest
degree to conform to this code of universal custom, he is called "a
specimen." A man of heart or of talent, D'Argenson, for example, bore
a surname of "simpleton," because his originality transcended the
conventional standard.  "That has no name, there is nothing like it!"
embodies the strongest censure.  In conduct as in literature, whatever
departs from a certain type is rejected.  The quantity of authorized
actions is as great as the number of authorized words.  The same super-
refined taste impoverishes the initiatory act as well as the
initiatory expression, people acting as they write, according to
acquired formulas and within a circumscribed circle.  Under no
consideration can the eccentric, the unforeseen, the spontaneous,
vivid inspiration be accepted.  Among twenty instances I select the
least striking since it merely relates to a simple gesture, and is a
measure of other things.  Mademoiselle de - obtains, through family
influence, a pension for Marcel, a famous dancing-master, and runs
off, delighted, to his domicile to convey him the patent.  Marcel
receives it and at once flings it on the floor: "Mademoiselle, did I
teach you to offer an object in that manner? Pick up that paper and
hand it to me as you ought to." She picks up the patent and presents
it to him with all suitable grace.  "That's very well, Mademoiselle, I
accept it, although your elbow was not quite sufficiently rounded, and
I thank you."[3] So many graces end in becoming tiresome; after having
eaten rich food for years, a little milk and dry bread becomes
welcome.

Among all these social flavorings one is especially abused; one
which, unremittingly employed, communicates to all dishes its frigid
and piquant relish, I mean insincerity (badinage).  Society does not
tolerate passion, and in this it exercises its right.  One does not
enter company to be either vehement or somber; a strained air or one
of concentration would appear inconsistent.  The mistress of a house is
always right in reminding a man that his emotional constraint brings
on silence.  "Monsieur Such-a-one, you are not amiable to day." To be
always amiable is, accordingly, an obligation, and, through this
training, a sensibility that is diffused through innumerable little
channels never produces a broad current.  "One has a hundred friends,
and out of these hundred friends two or three may have some chagrin
every day; but one could not award them sympathy for any length of
time as, in that event, one would be wanting in consideration for the
remaining ninety-seven;"[4] one might sigh for an instant with some
one of the ninety-seven, and that would be all.  Madame du Deffant,
having lost her oldest friend, the President Hénault, that very day
goes to sup in a large assemblage: "Alas," she exclaimed, "he died at
six o'clock this evening; otherwise you would not see me here." Under
this constant régime of distractions and diversions there are no
longer any profound sentiments; we have nothing but an epidermic
exterior; love itself is reduced to "the exchange of two fantasies." -
And, as one always falls on the side to which one inclines, levity
becomes deliberate and a matter of elegance.[5] Indifference of the
heart is in fashion; one would be ashamed to show any genuine emotion.
One takes pride in playing with love, in treating woman as a
mechanical puppet, in touching one inward spring, and then another, to
force out, at will, her anger or her pity.  Whatever she may do, there
is no deviation from the most insulting politeness; the very
exaggeration of false respect which is lavished on her is a mockery by
which indifference for her is fully manifested.  - But they go still
further, and in souls naturally unfeeling, gallantry turns into
wickedness.  Through ennui and the demand for excitement, through
vanity, and as a proof of dexterity, delight is found in tormenting,
in exciting tears, in dishonoring and in killing women by slow
torture.  At last, as vanity is a bottomless pit, there is no species
of blackness of which these polished executioners are not capable; the
personages of Laclos are derived from these originals.[6] - Monsters
of this kind are, undoubtedly, rare; but there is no need of reverting
to them to ascertain how much egotism is harbored in the gallantry of
society.  The women who erected it into an obligation are the first to
realize its deceptiveness, and, amidst so much homage without heat, to
pine for the communicative warmth of a powerful sentiment.  - The
character of the century obtains its last trait and "the man of
feeling comes on the stage.

II.RETURN TO NATURE AND SENTIMENT.

Final trait of the century, an increased sensitivity in the best
circles.  - Date of its advent.  - Its symptoms in art and in
literature.  - Its dominion in private.  - Its affectations.  - Its
sincerity.  - Its delicacy.

It is not that the groundwork of habits becomes different, for
these remain equally worldly and dissipated up the last.  But fashion
authorizes a new affectation, consisting of effusions, reveries, and
sensibilities as yet unknown.  The point is to return to nature, to
admire the country, to delight in the simplicity of rustic manners, to
be interested in village people, to be human, to have a heart, to find
pleasure in the sweetness and tenderness of natural affections, to be
a husband and a father, and still more, to possess a soul, virtues,
and religious emotions, to believe in Providence and immortality, to
be capable of enthusiasm.  One wants to be all this, or at least show
an inclination that way.  In any event, if the desire does exist it is
one the implied condition, that one shall not be too much disturbed in
his ordinary pursuits, and that the sensations belonging to the new
order of life shall in no respect interfere with the enjoyments of the
old one.  Accordingly the exaltation which arises is little more than
cerebral fermentation, and the idyll is to be almost entirely
performed in the drawing-rooms.  Behold, then, literature, the drama,
painting and all the arts pursuing the same sentimental road to supply
heated imaginations with factitious nourishment.[7] Rousseau, in
labored periods, preaches the charms of an uncivilized existence,
while other masters, between two madrigals, fancy the delight of
sleeping naked in the primeval forest.  The lovers in "La Nouvelle
Héloise" interchange passages of fine style through four volumes,
whereupon a person "not merely methodical but prudent," the Comtesse
de Blot, exclaims, at a social gathering at the Duchesse de
Chartres', "a woman truly sensitive, unless of extraordinary virtue,
could refuse nothing to the passion of Rousseau."[8] People collect in
a dense crowd in the Exhibition around "L'Accordée de Village," "La
Cruche Cassée," and the "Retour de nourrice," with other rural and
domestic idylls by Greuze; the voluptuous element, the tempting
undercurrent of sensuality made perceptible in the fragile simplicity
of his artless maidens, is a dainty bit for the libertine tastes which
are kept alive beneath moral aspirations.[9] After these, Ducis,
Thomas, Parny, Colardeau, Boucher, Delille, Bernardin de St.  Pierre,
Marmontel, Florian, the mass of orators, authors and politicians, the
misanthrope Champfort, the logician La Harpe, the minister Necker, the
versifiers and the imitators of Gessner and Young, the Berquins, the
Bitaubés, nicely combed and bedizened, holding embroidered
handkerchiefs to wipe away tears, are to marshal forth the universal
eclogue down to the acme of the Revolution.  Marmontel's "Moral Tales"
appear in the columns of the "Mercure" for 1791 and 1792,[10] while
the number following the massacres of September opens with verses "to
the manes of my canary-bird.  "

Consequently, in all the details of private life, sensibility
displays its magniloquence.  A small temple to Friendship is erected in
a park.  A little altar to Benevolence is set up in a private closet.
Dresses à la Jean-Jacques-Rousseau are worn "analogous to the
principles of that author." Head-dresses are selected with "puffs au
sentiment" in which one may place the portrait of one's daughter,
mother, canary or dog, the whole "garnished with the hair of one's
father or intimate friend."[11] People keep intimate friends for whom
"they experience something so warm and so tender that it nearly
amounts to a passion" and whom they cannot go three hours a day
without seeing.  "Every time female companions interchange tender ideas
the voice suddenly changes into a pure and languishing tone, each
fondly regarding the other with approaching heads and frequently
embracing," and suppressing a yawn a quarter of an hour after, with a
nap in concert, because they have no more to say.  Enthusiasm becomes
an obligation.  On the revival of "Le père de famille" there are as
many handkerchiefs counted as spectators, and ladies faint away.  "It
is customary, especially for young women, to be excited, to turn pale,
to melt into tears and, generally, to be seriously affected on
encountering M. de Voltaire; they rush into his arms, stammer and
weep, their agitation resembling that of the most passionate
love."[12] - When a society-author reads his work in a drawing-room,
fashion requires that the company should utter exclamations and sob,
and that some pretty fainting subject should be unlaced.  Mme.  de
Genlis, who laughs at these affectations, is no less affected than the
rest.  Suddenly some one in the company is heard to say to the young
orphan whom she is exhibiting: "Pamela, show us Héloise," whereupon
Pamela, loosening her hair, falls on her knees and turns her eyes up
to heaven with an air of inspiration, to the great applause of the
assembly.[13] Sensibility becomes an institution.  The same Madame de
Genlis founds an order of Perseverance which soon includes "as many as
ninety chevaliers in the very best society." To become a member it is
necessary to solve some riddle, to answer a moral question and
pronounce a discourse on virtue.  Every lady or chevalier who discovers
and publishes "three well-verified virtuous actions" obtains a gold
medal.  Each chevalier has his "brother in arms," each lady has her
bosom friend and each member has a device, and each device, framed in
a little picture, figures in the "Temple of Honor," a sort of tent
gallantly decorated, and which M. de Lauzun causes to be erected in
the middle of a garden.[14] - The sentimental parade is complete, a
drawing room masquerade being visible even in this revival of
chivalry.

The froth of enthusiasm and of fine words nevertheless leaves in
the heart a residuum of active benevolence, trustfulness, and even
happiness, or, at least, expansiveness and freedom.  Wives, for the
first time, are seen accompanying their husbands into garrison;
mothers desire to nurse their infants, and fathers begin to interest
themselves in the education of their children.  Simplicity again forms
an element of manners.  Hair-powder is no longer put on little boys'
heads; many of the seigniors abandon laces, embroideries, red heels
and the sword, except when in full dress.  People appear in the streets
"dressed à la Franklin, in coarse cloth, with a knotty cane and thick
shoes."[15] The taste no longer runs on cascades, statues and stiff
and pompous decorations; the preference is for the English garden.  The
queen arranges a village for herself at the Trianon, where, "dressed
in a frock of white cambric muslin and a gauze neck-handkerchief, and
with a straw hat," she fishes in the lake and sees her cows milked.
Etiquette falls away like the paint scaling off from the skin,
disclosing the bright hue of natural emotions.  Madame Adelaide takes
up a violin and replaces an absent musician to let the peasant girls
dance16 The Duchesse de Bourbon goes out early in the morning
incognito to bestow alms, and "to see the poor in their garrets." The
Dauphine jumps out of her carriage to assist a wounded post-boy, a
peasant knocked down by a stag.  The king and the Comte d'Artois help a
carter to extract his cart from the mud.  People no longer think about
self-constraint, and self-adjustment, and of keeping up their dignity
under all circumstances, and of subjecting the weaknesses of human
nature to the exigencies of rank.  On the death of the first
Dauphin,[17] whilst the people in the room place themselves before the
king to prevent him from entering it, the queen falls at his knees,
and he says to her, weeping, "Ah, my wife, our dear child is dead,
since they do not wish me to see him." And the narrator adds with
admiration; "I always seem to see a good farmer and his excellent wife
a prey to the deepest despair at the loss of their beloved child."
Tears are no longer concealed, as it is a point of honor to be a human
being.  One becomes human and familiar with one's inferiors.  A prince,
on a review, says to the soldiers on presenting the princess to them,
"My boys, here is my wife." There is a disposition to make people
happy and to take great delight in their gratitude.  To be kind, to be
loved is the object of the head of a government, of a man in place.
This goes so far that God is prefigured according to this model.  The
"harmonies of nature" are construed into the delicate attentions of
Providence; on instituting filial affection the Creator "deigned to
choose for our best virtue our sweetest pleasure."[18] - The idyll
which is imagined to take place in heaven corresponds with the idyll
practiced on earth.  From the public up to the princes, and from the
princes down to the public, in prose, in verse, in compliments at
festivities, in official replies, in the style of royal edicts down to
the songs of the market-women, there is a constant interchange of
graces and of sympathies.  Applause bursts out in the theater at any
verse containing an allusion to princes, and, a moment after, at the
speech which exalts the merits of the people, the princes return the
compliment by applauding in their turn.[19] - On all sides, just as
this society is vanishing, a mutual deference, a spirit of kindliness
arises, like a soft and balmy autumnal breeze, to dissipate whatever
harshness remains of its aridity and to mingle with the radiance of
its last hours the perfume of dying roses.  We now encounter acts and
words of infinite grace, unique of their kind, like a lovely,
exquisite little figure on old Sèvres porcelain.  One day, on the
Comtesse Amélie de Boufflers speaking somewhat flippantly of her
husband, her mother-in-law interposes, "You forget that you are
speaking of my son." - "True, mamma, I thought I was only speaking of
your son-in-law." It is she again who, on playing "the boat," and
obliged to decide between this beloved mother-in-law and her own
mother, whom she scarcely knew, replies, "I would save my mother and
drown with my mother-in-law."[20] The Duchesse de Choiseul, the
Duchesse de Lauzun, and others besides, are equally charming
miniatures.  When the heart and the mind combine their considerations
they produce masterpieces, and these, like the art, the refinements
and the society which surrounds them, possess a charm unsurpassed by
anything except their own fragility.

III.  Personality Defects.

The failings of character thus formed.  - Adapted to one situation
but not to a contrary situation.  - Defects of intelligence.  - Defects
of disposition.  - Such a character is disarmed by good-breeding.

The reason is that, the better people have become adapted to a
certain situation the less prepared are they for the opposite
situation.  The habits and faculties that serve them in the previous
condition become prejudicial to them in the new one.  In acquiring
talents adapted to tranquil times they lose those suited to times of
agitation, reaching the extreme of feebleness at the same time with
the extreme of urbanity.  The more polished an aristocracy becomes the
weaker it becomes, and when no longer possessing the power to please
it not longer possesses the strength to struggle.  And yet, in this
world, we must struggle if we would live.  In humanity, as in nature,
empire belongs to force.  Every creature that loses the art and energy
of self-defense becomes so much more certainly a prey according as its
brilliancy, imprudence and even gentleness deliver it over in advance
to the gross appetites roaming around it.  Where find resistance in
characters formed by the habits we have just described? To defend
ourselves we must, first of all, look carefully around us, see and
foresee, and provide for danger.  How could they do this living as they
did? Their circle is too narrow and too carefully enclosed.  Confined
to their castles and mansions they see only those of their own sphere,
they hear only the echo of their own ideas, they imagine that there is
nothing beyond the public seems to consist of two hundred persons.
Moreover, disagreeable truths are not admitted into a drawing-room,
especially when of personal import, an idle fancy there becoming a
dogma because it becomes conventional.  Here, accordingly, we find
those who, already deceived by the limitations of their accustomed
horizon, fortify their delusion still more by delusions about their
fellow men.  They comprehend nothing of the vast world, which envelops
their little world; they are incapable of entering into the sentiments
of a bourgeois, of a villager; they have no conception of the peasant
as he is but as they would like him to be.  The idyll is in fashion,
and no one dares dispute it; any other supposition would be false
because it would be disagreeable, and as the drawing rooms have
decided that all will go well, all must go well.  Never was a delusion
more complete and more voluntary.  The Duc d'Orléans offers to wager a
hundred louis that the States-General will dissolve without
accomplishing anything, not even abolishing the lettre-de-cachet..
After the demolition has begun, and yet again after it is finished,
they will form opinions no more accurate.  They have no idea of social
architecture; they know nothing about its materials, its proportions,
or its harmonious balance; they have had no hand in it, they have
never worked at it.  They are entirely ignorant of the old building[21]
in which they occupy the first story.  They are not qualified to
calculate either its pressure or its resistance.[[22]] They conclude,
finally, that it is better to let the thing tumble in, and that the
restoration of the edifice in their behalf will follow its own course,
and that they will return to their drawing-room, expressly rebuilt for
them, and freshly gilded, to begin over again the pleasant
conversation which an accident, some tumult in the street, had
interrupted.[23] Clear-sighted in society, they are obtuse in
politics.  They examine everything by the artificial light of candles;
they are disturbed and bewildered in the powerful light of open day.
The eyelid has grown stiff through age.  The organ so long bent on the
petty details of one refined life no longer takes in the popular life
of the masses, and, in the new sphere into which it is suddenly
plunged, its refinement becomes the source of its blindness.

Nevertheless action is necessary, for danger is seizing them by the
throat.  But the danger is of an ignoble species, while their education
has provided them with no arms suitable for warding it off.  They have
learned how to fence, but not how to box.  They are still the sons of
those at Fontenoy, who, instead of being the first to fire,
courteously raised their hats and addressed their English antagonists,
"No, gentlemen, fire yourselves." Being the slaves of good-breeding
they are not free in their movements.  Numerous acts, and those the
most important, those of a sudden, vigorous and rude stamp, are
opposed to the respect a well-bred man entertains for others, or at
least to the respect which he owes to himself.  They do not consider
these allowable among themselves; they do not dream of their being
allowed, and, the higher their position the more their rank fetters
them.  When the royal family sets out for Varennes the accumulated
delays by which they are lost are the result of etiquette.  Madame de
Touzel insists on her place in the carriage to which she is entitled
as governess of the Children of France.  The king, on arriving, is
desirous of conferring the marshal's baton on M. de Bouillé, and after
running to and fro to obtain a baton he is obliged to borrow that of
the Duc de Choiseul.  The queen cannot dispense with a traveling
dressing-case and one has to be made large enough to contain every
imaginable implement from a warming-pan to a silver porridge-dish,
with other dishes besides; and, as if there were no shifts to be had
in Brussels, there had to be a complete outfit in this line for
herself and her children.[24] - A fervent devotion, even humanness,
the frivolity of the small literary spirit, graceful urbanity,
profound ignorance,[25] the lack or rigidity of the comprehension and
determination are still greater with the princes than with the nobles.
- All are impotent against the wild and roaring outbreak.  They have
not the physical superiority that can master it, the vulgar
charlatanism which can charm it away, the tricks of a Scapin to throw
it off the scent, the bull's neck, the mountebank's gestures, the
stentor's lungs, in short, the resources of the energetic temperament
and of animal cunning, alone capable of diverting the rage of the
unchained brute.  To find such fighters, they seek three or four men of
a different race and education, men having suffered and roamed about,
a brutal commoner like the abbé Maury, a colossal and dirty satyr like
Mirabeau, a bold and prompt adventurer like that Dumouriez who, at
Cherbourg, when, through the feebleness of the Duc de Beuvron, the
stores of grain were given up and the riot began, hooted at and nearly
cut to pieces, suddenly sees the keys of the storehouse in the hands
of a Dutch sailor, and, yelling to the mob that it was betrayed
through a foreigner having got hold of the keys, himself jumps down
from the railing, seizes the keys and hands them to the officer of the
guard, saying to the people, "I am your father, I am the man to be
responsible for the storehouse!"[26] To entrust oneself with porters
and brawlers, to be collared by a political club, to improvise on the
highways, to bark louder than the barkers, to fight with the fists or
a cudgel, as much later with the young and rich gangs, against brutes
and lunatics incapable of employing other arguments, and who must be
answered in the same vein, to mount guard over the Assembly, to act as
volunteer constable, to spare neither one's own hide nor that of
others, to be one of the people to face the people, all these are
simple and effectual proceedings, but so vulgar as to appear to them
disgusting.  The idea of resorting to such means never enters their
head; they neither know how, nor do they care to make use of their
hands in such business.[27] They are skilled only in the duel and,
almost immediately, the brutality of opinion, by means of assaults,
stops the way to polite combats.  Their arms, the shafts of the
drawing-room, epigrams, witticisms, songs, parodies, and other needle
thrusts are impotent against the popular bull.[28] Their personality
lacks both roots and resources; through super-refinement it has
weakened; their nature, impoverished by culture, is incapable of the
transformations by which we are renewed and survive.  - An all-powerful
education has repressed, mollified, and enfeebled their very
instincts.  About to die, they experience none of the reactions of
blood and rage, the universal and sudden restoration of the forces,
the murderous spasm, the blind irresistible need of striking those who
strike them.  If a gentleman is arrested in his own house by a Jacobin
we never find him splitting his head open.[29]  They allow themselves
to be taken, going quietly to prison; to make an uproar would be bad
taste; it is necessary, above all things, to remain what they are,
well-bred people of society.  In prison both men and women dress
themselves with great care, pay each other visits and keep up a
drawing-room; it may be at the end of a corridor, by the light of
three or four candles; but here they circulate jests, compose
madrigals, sing songs and pride themselves on being as gallant, as gay
and as gracious as ever: need people be morose and ill-behaved because
accident has consigned them to a poor inn? They preserve their dignity
and their smile before their judges and on the cart; the women,
especially, mount the scaffold with the ease and serenity
characteristic of an evening entertainment.  It is the supreme
characteristic of good-breeding, erected into an unique duty, and
become to this aristocracy a second nature, which is found in its
virtues as well as in its vices, in its faculties as well as in its
impotencies, in its prosperity as at its fall, and which adorns it
even in the death to which it conducts.

_________________________________________________________________

Notes:

[1].  Champfort, 110.

[2].  George Sand, V.  59.  "I was rebuked for everything; I never
made a movement which was not criticized."

[3].  "Paris, Versailles, et les provinces," I.  162.  - "The king of
Sweden is here; be wears rosettes on his breeches; all is over; he is
ridiculous, and a provincial king." ("Le Gouvernement de Normandie,"
by Hippeau, IV.  237, July 4, 1784.

[4].  Stendhal, "Rome, Naples and Florence," 379.  Stated by an
English lord.

[5] Marivaux, "La Petit-Maître corrigé.  - Gresset, "Le Méchant."
Crébillon fils, "La Nuit et le Moment," (especially the scene between
the scene between Citandre and Lucinde).  - Collé, "La Verité dans le
Vin," (the part of the abbé with the with the présidente).  - De
Bezenval, 79.  (The comte de Frise and Mme.  de Blot).  "Vie privée du
Maréchal de Richelieu," (scenes with Mme.  Michelin).  - De Goncourt,
167 to 174.

[6].  Laclos, "Les Liaisons Dangereuses." Mme.  de Merteuil was
copied after a Marquise de Grenoble.  - Remark the difference between
Lovelace and Valmont, one being stimulated by pride and the other by
vanity.

[7].  The growth of sensibility is indicated by the following dates:
Rousseau, "Sur l'influence des lettres et des arts," 1749; "Sur
l'inégalité," 1753; "Nouvelle Héloise," 1759.  Greuze, "Le Pére de
Famille lisant la Bible," 1755; "L'Accordée de Village," 1761.
Diderot, "Le fils natural," 1757; "Le Pére de Famille," 1758.

[8].  Mme.  de Genlis, "Mémoires," chap.  XVII.  - George Sand, I.  72.
The young Mme.  de Francueil, on seeing Rousseaufor the first time,
burst into tears.

[9].  This point has been brought out with as much skill as accuracy
by Messieurs de Goncourt in "L'Art au dix-huitième siècle," I.  433-
438.

[10].  The number for August, 1792, contains "Les Rivaux d'eux-
mêmes." - About the same time other pieces are inserted in the
"Mercure," such as "The federal union of Hymen and Cupid," "Les
Jaloux," "A Pastoral Romance," "Ode Anacréontique à Mlle.  S.  D.  .  .  .
" etc.

[11].  Mme.  de Genlis, "Adéle et Théodore," I.  312.  - De Goncourt,
"La Femme an dixhuitième siècle," 318.  - Mme.  d'Oberkirk, I.  56.  -
Description of the puff au sentiment of the Duchesse de Chartres (de
Goncourt, 311): "In the background is a woman seated in a chair and
holding an infant, which represents the Duc de Valois and his nurse.
On the right is a parrot pecking at a cherry, and on the left a little
Negro, the duchess's two pets: the whole is intermingled with locks of
hair of all the relations of Mme.  de Chartres, the hair of her
husband, father and father-in-law."

[12].  Mme.  de Genlis, "Les Dangers du Monde." I, scène VII; II,
scène IV; - "Adèle et Théodore," I.  312; - "Souvenirs de Félicie,"
199; - Bachaumont, IV, 320.

[13].  Mme.  de la Rochejacquelein, "Mémoires."

[14].  Mme.  de Genlis, "Mémoires," chap.  XX.  - De Lauzun, 270.

[15].  Mme.  d'Oberkirk, II.  35 (1783-1784).  Mme.  Campan, III.  371.  -
Mercier, "Tableau de Paris," passim.

[16].  "Correspondance" by Métra, XVII.  55, (1784).-- Mme.
d'Oberkirk, II.  234.  - "Marie Antoinette," by d'Arneth and Geffroy,
II.  63, 29.

[17].  "Le Gouvernement de Normandie," by Hippeau, IV.  387 (Letters
of June 4, 1789, by an eye-witness).

[18].  Florian, "Ruth".

[19].  Hippeau, IV.  86 (June 23, 1773), on the representation of "Le
Siege de Calais," at the Comédie Française, at the moment when Mlle.
Vestris has pronounced these words:

  Le Français dans son prince aime à trouver un frère
  Qui, né fils de l'Etat, en devienne le père.

"Long and universal plaudits greeted the actress who had turned in
the direction of the Dauphin." In another place these verses recur:

  Quelle leçon pour vous, superbes potentats!
  Veillez sur vos sujets dans le rang le plus bas,
  Tel, loin de vos regards, dans la misère expire,
  Qui quelque jour peut-être, eût sauvé votre empire.

"The Dauphin and the Dauphine in turn applauded the speech.  This
demonstration of their sensibility was welcomed with new expressions
of affection and gratitude."

[20].  Madame de Genlis, "Souvenirs de Félicie," 76, 161.

[21].  M. de Montlosier; in the Constituent Assembly, is about the
only person familiar with feudal laws.

[22].  "A competent and impartial man who would estimate the
chances of the success of the Révolution would find that there are
more against it than against the five winning numbers in a lottery;
but this is possible, and unfortunately, this time, they all came out"
(Duc de Lévis, "Souvenirs," 328.)

[23].  "Corinne," by Madame de Staël, the character of the Comte
d'Erfeuil.  - Malonet, "Mémoires," II.  297 (a memorable instance of
political stupidity).

[24].  Mme.  Campan, II.  140, 313.  - Duc de Choiseul, "Mémoires."

[25].  Journal of Dumont d'Urville, commander of the vessel which
transported Charles X.  into exile in 1830.  - See note 4 at the end of
the volume.

[26].  Dumouriez, "Mémoires," III.  chap.  III.  (July 21, 1789).

[27].  1 "All these fine ladies and gentlemen who knew so well how
to bow and courtesy and walk over a carpet, could not take three steps
on God's earth without getting dreadfully fatigued.  They could not
even open or shut a door; they had not even strength enough to lift a
log to put it on the fire; they had to call a servant to draw up a
chair for them; they could not come in or go out by themselves.  what
could they have done with their graces, without their valets to supply
the place of hands and feet?" (George Sand, V.  61.)

[28].  When Madame de F- had expressed a clever thing she felt quite
proud of it.  M- remarked that on uttering something clever about an
emetic she was quite surprised that she was not purged.  Champfort,
107.

[29].  The following is an example of what armed resistance can
accomplish for a man in his own house.  "A gentleman of Marseilles,
proscribed and living in his country domicile, has provided himself
with gun, pistols and saber, and never goes out without this armament,
declaring that he will not be taken alive.  Nobody dared to execute the
order of arrest.  (Anne Plumptree, "A Residence of three years in
France," (1802-1805), II.  115.



BOOK THIRD.  THE SPIRIT AND THE DOCTRINE.

CHAPTER I.  SCIENTIFIC ACQUISITION.

The composition of the revolutionary spirit.  -- Scientific
acquisition its first element.

On seeing a man with a somewhat feeble constitution, but healthy in
appearance and of steady habits, greedily swallow some new kind of
cordial and then suddenly fall to the ground, foam at the mouth, act
deliriously and writhe in convulsions, we at once surmise that this
agreeable beverage contained some dangerous substance; but a delicate
analysis is necessary to detect and decompose the poison.  The
philosophy of the eighteenth century contained poison, and of a kind
as potent as it was peculiar; for, not only is it a long historic
elaboration, the final and condensed essence of the tendency of the
thought of the century, but again its two principal ingredients have
this peculiarity, that, separate, they are salutary, and in
combination they form a venomous compound.

I.SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS.

The accumulation and progress of discoveries in science and in
nature.  - They serve as a starting-point for the new philosophers.

The first is scientific discovery, admirable on all sides, and
beneficent in its nature; it is made up of masses of facts slowly
accumulated and then summarily presented, or in rapid succession.  For
the first time in history the sciences expand and affirm each other to
the extent of providing, not, as formerly, under Galileo and
Descartes, constructive fragments, or provisional scaffolding, but a
definite and demonstrated system of the universe, that of Newton.[1]
Around this capital fact, almost all the discoveries of the century,
either as complementary or as prolongations, range themselves.  In pure
mathematics we have the Infinitesimal Calculus discovered
simultaneously by Leibnitz and Newton, mechanics reduced by d'Alembert
to a single theorem, and that superb collection of theories which,
elaborated by the Bernouillis, Euler, Clairaut, d'Alembert, Taylor and
Maclaurin, is finally completed at the end of the century by Monge,
Lagrange, and Laplace.[2] In astronomy, the series of calculations and
observations which, from Newton to Laplace, transforms science into a
problem of mechanics, explains and predicts the movements of the
planets and of their satellites, indicating the origin and formation
of our solar system, and, extending beyond this, through the
discoveries of Herschel, affording an insight into the distribution of
the stellar archipelagos, and of the grand outlines of celestial
architecture.  In physics, the decomposition of light and the
principles of optics discovered by Newton, the velocity of sound, the
form of its undulations, and from Sauveur to Chladni, from Newton to
Bernouilli and Lagrange, the experimental laws and leading theorems of
Acoustics, the primary laws of the radiation of heat by Newton, Kraft
and Lambert, the theory of latent heat by Black, the proportions of
caloric by Lavoisier and Laplace, the first true conceptions of the
source of fire and heat, the experiments, laws, and means by which
Dufay, Nollet, Franklin, and especially Coulomb explain, manipulate
and, for the first time, utilize electricity.  -  In Chemistry, all
the foundations of the science: isolated oxygen, nitrogen and
hydrogen, the composition of water, the theory of combustion, chemical
nomenclature, quantitative analysis, the indestructibility of matter,
in short, the discoveries of Scheele, Priestley, Cavendish and Stahl,
crowned with the clear and concise theory of Lavoisier.  -   In
Mineralogy, the goniometer, the constancy of angles and the primary
laws of derivation by Romé de Lisle, and next the discovery of types
and the mathematical deduction of secondary forms by Haüy.  -  In
Geology, the verification and results of Newton's theory, the exact
form of the earth, the depression of the poles, the expansion of the
equator,[3] the cause and the law of the tides, the primitive fluidity
of the planet, the constancy of its internal heat, and then, with
Buffon, Desmarets, Hutton and Werner, the aqueous or igneous origin of
rocks, the stratifications of the earth, the structure of beds of
fossils, the prolonged and repeated submersion of continents, the slow
growth of animal and vegetable deposits, the vast antiquity of life,
the stripping, fracturing and gradual transformation of the
terrestrial surface,[4] and, finally the grand picture in which Buffon
describes in approximate manner the entire history of our globe, from
the moment it formed a mass of glowing lava down to the time when our
species, after so many lost or surviving species, was able to inhabit
it.  -  Upon this science of inorganic matter we see arising at the
same time the science of organic matter.  Grew, and then Vaillant had
just demonstrated the sexual system and described the fecundating of
plants; Linnaeus invents botanical nomenclature and the first complete
classifications; the Jussieus discover the subordination of
characteristics and natural classification.  Digestion is explained by
Réaumur and Spallanzani, respiration by Lavoisier ; Prochaska verifies
the mechanism of reflex actions ; Haller and Spallanzani experiment on
and describe the conditions and phases of generation.  Scientists
penetrate to the lowest stages of animal life.  Réaumur publishes his
admirable observations on insects and Lyonnet devotes twenty years to
portraying the willow-caterpillar; Spallanzani resuscitates his
rotifers, Tremblay dissects his fresh-water polyps, and Needham
reveals his infusoria.  The experimental conception of life is deduced
from these various researches.  Buffon already, and especially Lamarck,
in their great and incomplete sketches, outline with penetrating
divination the leading features of modern physiology and zoology.
Organic molecules everywhere diffused or everywhere growing, species
of globules constantly in course of decay and restoration, which,
through the blind and spontaneous development, transform themselves,
multiply and combine, and which, without either foreign direction or
any preconceived end, solely through the effect of their structure and
surroundings, unite together to form those masterly organisms which we
call plants and animals : in the beginning, the simplest forms, and
next a slow, gradual, complex and perfected organization ; the organ
created through habits, necessity and surrounding medium; heredity
transmitting acquired modifications,[5] all denoting in advance, in a
state of conjecture and approximation, the cellular theory of later
physiologists[6] and the conclusions of Darwin.[7] In the picture
which the human mind draws of nature, the general outline is marked by
the science of the eighteenth century, the arrangement of its plan and
of the principal masses being so correctly marked, that to day the
leading lines remain intact.  With the exception of a few partial
corrections we have nothing to efface.

This vast supply of positive or probable facts, either demonstrated
or anticipated, furnishes food, substance and impulse to the intellect
of the eighteenth century.  Consider the leaders of public opinion, the
promoters of the new philosophy: they are all, in various degrees,
versed in the physical and natural sciences.  Not only are they
familiar with theories and authorities, but again they have a personal
knowledge of facts and things.  Voltaire[8] is among the first to
explain the optical and astronomical theories of Newton, and again to
make calculations, observations and experiments of his own.  He writes
memoirs for the Academy of Sciences "On the Measure of Motive Forces,"
and "On the Nature and Diffusion of Heat." He handles Réamur's
thermometer, Newton's prism, and Muschenbrock's pyrometer.  In his
laboratory at Cirey he has all the known apparatus for physics and
chemistry.  He experiments with his own hand on the reflection of light
in space, on the increase of weight in calcified metals, on the
renewal of amputated parts of animals, and in the spirit of a true
savant, persistently, with constant repetitions, even to the beheading
of forty snails and slugs, to verify an assertion made by Spallanzani.
-  The same curiosity and the same preparation prevails with all
imbued with the same spirit.  In the other camp, among the Cartesians,
about to disappear, Fontenelle is an excellent mathematician, the
competent biographer of all eminent men of science, the official
secretary and true representative of the Academy of Sciences.  In other
places, in the Academy of Bordeaux, Montesquieu reads discourses on
the mechanism of the echo, and on the use of the renal glands; he
dissects frogs, tests the effect of heat and cold on animated tissues,
and publishes observations on plants and insects.  -  Rousseau, the
least instructed of all, attends the lectures of the chemist Rouelle,
botanizing and appropriating to himself all the elements of human
knowledge with which to write his "Emile."  -  Diderot taught
mathematics and devoured every science and art even to the technical
processes of all industries.  D'Alembert stands in the first rank of
mathematicians.  Buffon translated Newton's theory of flux, and the
Vegetable Statics of Hales; he is in turn a metallurgist, optician,
geographer, geologist and, last of all, an anatomist.  Condillac, to
explain the use of signs and the relation of ideas, writes abridgments
of arithmetic, algebra, mechanics and astronomy.[9] Maupertuis,
Condorcet and Lalande are mathematicians, physicists and astronomers;
d'Holbach, Lamettrie and Cabanis are chemists, naturalists
physiologists and physicians.  -  Prophets of a superior or inferior
kind, masters or pupils, specialists or simple amateurs, all draw
directly or indirectly from the living source that has just burst
forth.  This is their basis when they begin to teach about Man, what he
is, from whence he came, where he is going, what he may become and
what he should be.  A new point of departure leads to new points of
view; so that the idea, which was then entertained of the human being
will become completely transformed.

II.   SCIENCE DETACHED FROM THEOLOGY.

Change of the point of view in the science of man.  - It is detached
from theology and is united with the natural sciences.

Let us suppose a mind thoroughly imbued with these new truths, to
be placed on the orbit of Saturn, and let him observe[10].  Amidst this
vast and overwhelming space and in these boundless solar
archipelagoes, how small is our own sphere, and the earth, what a
grain of sand! What multitudes of worlds beyond our own, and, if life
exists in them, what combinations are possible other than those of
which we are the result! What is life, what is organic substance in
the monstrous universe but an indifferent mass, a passing accident,
the corruption of a few epidermic particles? And if this be life, what
is that humanity which is so small a fragment of it?  -  Such is Man
in nature, an atom, and an ephemeral particle; let this not be lost
sight of in our theories concerning his origin, his importance, and
his destiny.

 "A mite that would consider itself as the center of all things
would be grotesque, and therefore it is essential that an insect
almost infinitely small should not show conceit almost infinitely
great."[11] -

How slow has been the evolution of the globe itself! What myriads
of ages between the first cooling of its mass and the beginnings of
life![12] Of what consequence is the turmoil of our ant-hill compared
to the geological tragedy in which we have born no part, the strife
between fire and water, the thickening of the earth's crust, formation
of the universal sea, the construction and separation of continents!
Previous to our historical record what a long history of vegetable and
animal existence! What a succession of flora and fauna! What
generations of marine organisms in forming the strata of sediment!
What generations of plans in forming the deposits of coal! What
transformations of climate to drive the pachydermata away from the
pole!  -  And now comes Man, the latest of all, he is like the
uppermost bud on the top of a tall ancient tree, flourishing there for
a while, but, like the tree, destined to perish after a few seasons,
when the increasing and foretold congelation allowing the tree to live
shall force the tree to die.  He is not alone on the branch; beneath
him, around him, on a level with him, other buds shoot forth, born of
the same sap; but he must not forget, if he would comprehend his own
being, that, along with himself, other lives exist in his vicinity,
graduated up to him and issuing from the same trunk.  If he is unique
he is not isolated, being an animal among other animals;[13] in him
and with them, substance, organization and birth, the formation and
renewal of the functions, senses and appetites, are similar, while his
superior intelligence, like their rudimentary intelligence, has for an
indispensable organ a nervous matter whose structure is the same with
him as with them.  -  Thus surrounded, brought forth and borne along
by nature, is it to be supposed that in nature he is an empire within
an empire? He is there as the part of a whole, by virtue of being a
physical body, a chemical composition, an animated organism, a
sociable animal, among other bodies, other compositions, other social
animals, all analogous to him; and by virtue of these classifications,
he is, like them, subject to laws.  -  For, if the first cause is
unknown to us, and we dispute among ourselves to know what it is,
whether innate or external, we affirm with certainty the mode of its
action, and that it operates only according to fixed and general laws.
Every circumstance, whatever it may be, is conditioned, and, its
conditions being given, it never fails to conform to them.  Of two
links forming a chain, the first always draws on the second.  There are
laws:

* for numbers, forms, and motions,

* for the revolution of the planets and the fall of bodies,

* for the diffusion of light and the radiation of heat,

* for the attractions and repulsion of electricity,

* for chemical combinations, and

* for the birth, equilibrium and dissolution of organic bodies.

They exist for the birth, maintenance, and development of human
societies, for the formation, conflict, and direction of ideas,
passions and determinations of human individuals.[14] In all this, Man
is bound up with nature; hence, if we would comprehend him, we must
observe him in her, after her, and like her, with the same
independence, the same precautions, and in the same spirit.  Through
this remark alone the method of the moral sciences is fixed.  In
history, in psychology, in morals, in politics, the thinkers of the
preceding century, Pascal, Bossuet, Descartes, Fenelon, Malebrance,
and La Bruyère, all based their thoughts on dogma; It is plain to
every one qualified to read them that their base is predetermined.
Religion provided them with a complete theory of the moral order of
things; according to this theory, latent or exposed, they described
Man and accommodated their observations to the preconceived model.  The
writers of the eighteenth century rejected this method: they dwell on
Man, on the observable Man, and on his surroundings; in their eyes,
conclusions about the soul, its origin, and its destiny, must come
afterwards and depend wholly, not on that which the Revelation
provided, but on that which observation does and will provide.  The
moral sciences are now divorced from theology and attach themselves,
as if a prolongation of them, to the physical sciences.

III.   THE TRANSFORMATION OF HISTORY.

Voltaire.  - Criticism and conceptions of unity.  - Montesquieu.  - An
outline of social laws.

Through the separation from theology and the attachment to natural
science the humanities become science.  In history, every foundation on
which we now build, is laid.  Compare Bossuet's "Discours sur
l'histoire universelle," with Voltaire's "Essai sur les mœurs," and we
at once see how new and profound these foundations were.  -   The
critics of religious dogma here establish their fundamental principle:
in view of the fact that the laws of nature are universal and
permanent it follows that, in the moral world, as in the physical
world, there can be no exception from them, and that no arbitrary or
foreign force intervenes to disturb the regular scientific procedures,
which will provide a sure means of discerning myth from truth.[15]
Biblical exegesis is born out of this maxim, and not alone that of
Voltaire, but also the critical explanatory methods of the future.
[16]  Meanwhile they skeptically examine the annals of all people,
carelessly cutting away and suppressing; too hastily, extravagantly,
especially where the ancients are concerned, because their historical
expedition is simply a scouting trip; but nevertheless with such an
overall insight that we may still approve almost all the outlines of
their summary chart.  The (newly discovered) primitive Man was not a
superior being, enlightened from above, but a coarse savage, naked and
miserable, slow of growth, sluggish in progress, the most destitute
and most needy of all animals, and, on this account, sociable, endowed
like the bee and the beaver with an instinct for living in groups, and
moreover an imitator like the monkey, but more intelligent, capable of
passing by degrees from the language of gesticulation to that of
articulation, beginning with a monosyllabic idiom which gradually
increases in richness, precision and subtlety.[17] How many centuries
are requisite to attain to this primitive language! How many centuries
more to the discovery of the most necessary arts, the use of fire, the
fabrication of "hatches of silex and jade", the melting and refining
of metals, the domestication of animals, the production and
modification of edible plants, the formation of early civilized and
durable communities, the discovery of writing, figures and
astronomical periods.[18] Only after a dawn of vast and infinite
length do we see in Chaldea and in China the commencement of an
accurate chronological history.  There are five or six of these great
independent centers of spontaneous civilization, China, Babylon,
ancient Persia, India, Egypt, Phoenicia, and the two American empires.
On collecting these fragments together, on reading such of their books
as have been preserved, and which travelers bring to us, the five
Kings of the Chinese, the Vedas of the Hindus, the Zoroastrians of the
ancient Persians, we find that all contain religions, moral theories,
philosophies and institutions, as worthy of study as our own.  Three of
these codes, those of India, China and the Muslims, still at the
present time govern countries as vast as our Europe, and nations of
equal importance.  We must not, like Bossuet, "overlook the universe in
a universal history," and subordinate humanity to a small population
confined to a desolate region around the Dead Sea.[19] Human history
is a thing of natural growth like the rest; its direction is due to
its own elements; no external force guides it, but the inward forces
that create it; it is not tending to any prescribed end but developing
a result.  And the chief result is the progress of the human mind.
"Amidst so many ravages and so much destruction, we see a love of
order secretly animating the human species, and forestalling its utter
ruin.  It is one of the springs of nature ever recovering its energy;
it is the source of the formation of the codes of nations; it causes
the law and the ministers of the law to be respected in Tinquin and in
the islands of Formosa as well as in Rome." Man thus possesses, said
Voltaire, a "principle of Reason," namely, a "an instinct for
engineering" suggesting to him useful implements;[20] also an instinct
of right suggesting to him his moral conceptions.  These two instincts
form a part of his makeup; he has them from his birth, "as birds have
their feathers, and bears their hair.  Hence he is perfectible through
nature, and merely conforms to nature in improving his mind and in
bettering his condition.  Extend the idea farther along with Turgot and
Condorcet,[21] and, with all its exaggerations, we see arising, before
the end of the century, our modern theory of progress, that which
founds all our aspirations on the boundless advance of the sciences,
on the increase of comforts which their applied discoveries constantly
bring to the human condition, and on the increase of good sense which
their discoveries, popularized, slowly deposit in the human brain.

A second principle has to be established to complete the
foundations of history.  Discovered by Montesquieu it still to-day
serves as a constructive support, and, if we resume the work, as if on
the substructure of the master's edifice, it is simply owing to
accumulated erudition placing at our disposal more substantial and
more abundant materials.  In human society all parts are
interdependent; no modification of one can take place without
effecting proportionate changes in the others.  Institutions, laws and
customs are not mingled together, as in a heap, through chance or
caprice, but connected one with the other through convenience or
necessity, as in a harmony.[22] According as authority is in all, in
several or in one hand, according as the sovereign admits or rejects
laws superior to himself, with intermediary powers below him,
everything changes or tends to differ in meaning and in importance:

* public intelligence,

* education,

* the form of judgments,

* the nature and order of penalties,

* the condition of women,

* military organization

* and the nature and the extent of taxation.

A multitude of subordinate wheels depend on the great central
wheel.  For if the clock runs, it is owing to the harmony of its
various parts, from which it follows that, on this harmony ceasing,
the clock gets out of order.  But, besides the principal spring, there
are others which, acting on or in combination with it, give to each
clock a special character and a peculiar movement.  Such, in the first
place, is climate, that is to say, the degree of heat or cold,
humidity or dryness, with its infinite effects on man's physical and
moral attributes, followed by its influence on political, civil and
domestic servitude or freedom.  Likewise the soil, according to its
fertility, its position and its extent.  Likewise the physical régime,
according as a people is composed of hunters, shepherds or
agriculturists.  Likewise the fecundity of the race, and the consequent
slow or rapid increase of population, and also the excess in number,
now of males and now of females.  And finally, likewise, are national
character and religion.  -  All these causes, each added to the other,
or each limited by the other, contribute together to form a total
result, namely society.  Simple or complex, stable or unstable,
barbarous or civilized, this society contains within itself its
explanations of its being.  Strange as a social structure may be, it
can be explained; also its institutions, however contradictory.
Neither prosperity, nor decline, nor despotism, nor freedom, is the
result of a throw of the dice, of luck or an unexpected turn of events
caused by rash men.  They are conditions we must live with.  In any
event, it is useful to understand them, either to improve our
situation or bear it patiently, sometimes to carry out appropriate
reforms, sometimes to renounce impracticable reforms, now to assume
the authority necessary for success, and now the prudence making us
abstain.

IV.  THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY.

The transformation of psychology.  - Condillac.  - The theory of
sensation and of signs.

  We now reach the core of moral science; the human being in
general.  The natural history of the mind must be dealt with, and this
must be done as we have done the others, by discarding all prejudice
and adhering to facts, taking analogy for our guide, beginning with
origins and following, step by step, the development by which the
infant, the savage, the uncultivated primitive man, is converted into
the rational and cultivated man.  Let us consider life at the outset,
the animal at the lowest degree on the scale, the human being as soon
as it is born.  The first thing we find is perception, agreeable or
disagreeable, and next a want, propensity or desire, and therefore at
last, by means of a physiological mechanism, voluntary or involuntary
movements, more or less accurate and more or less appropriate and
coordinated.  And this elementary fact is not merely primitive; it is,
again, constant and universal, since we encounter it at each moment of
each life, and in the most complicated as well as in the simplest.  Let
us accordingly ascertain whether it is not the thread with which all
our mental cloth is woven, and whether its spontaneous unfolding, and
the knotting of mesh after mesh, is not finally to produce the entire
network of our thought and passion.  -  Condillac (1715-1780)provides
us here with an incomparable clarity and precision with the answers to
all our questions, which, however the revival of theological prejudice
and German metaphysics was to bring into discredit in the beginning of
the nineteenth century, but which fresh observation, the establishment
of mental pathology, and dissection have now (in 1875) brought back,
justified and completed.[23] Locke had already stated that our ideas
all originate in outward or inward experience.  Condillac shows further
that the actual elements of perception, memory, idea, imagination,
judgment, reasoning, knowledge are sensations, properly so called, or
revived sensations; our loftiest ideas are derived from no other
material, for they can be reduced to signs which are themselves
sensations of a certain kind.  Sensations accordingly form the
substance of human or of animal intelligence; but the former
infinitely surpasses the latter in this, that, through the creation of
signs, it succeeds in isolating, abstracting and noting fragments of
sensations, that is to say, in forming, combining and employing
general conceptions.  -  This being granted, we are able to verify all
our ideas, for, through reflection, we can revive and reconstruct the
ideas we had formed without any reflection.  No abstract definitions
exist at the outset; abstraction is ulterior and derivative; foremost
in each science must be placed examples, experiences, evident facts;
from these we derive our general idea.  In the same way we derive from
several general ideas of the same degree another general idea, and so
on successively, step by step, always proceeding according to the
natural order of things, by constant analysis, using expressive signs,
as with mathematicians in passing from calculation by the fingers to
calculation by numerals, and from this to calculation by letters, and
who, calling upon the eyes to aid Reason, depict the inward analogy of
quantities by the outward analogy of symbols.  In this way science
becomes complete by means of a properly organized language.[24]  -
Through this reversal of the usual method we summarily dispose of
disputes about words, escape the illusions of human speech, simplify
study, remodel education, enhance discoveries, subject every assertion
to control, and bring all truths within reach of all understandings.

V.  THE ANALYTICAL METHOD.

The analytical method.  - Its principle.  - The conditions requisite
to make it productive.  - These conditions wanting or inadequate in the
18th century.  - The truth and survival of the principle.

Such is the course to be pursued with all the sciences, and
especially with the moral and political sciences.  To consider in turn
each distinct province of human activity, to decompose the leading
notions out of which we form our conceptions, those of religion,
society and government, those of utility, wealth and exchange, those
of justice, right and duty.  To revert to manifest facts, to first
experiences, to the simple circumstances in which the elements of our
ideas are included; to extricate from these the precious lode without
omission or mixture; to recompose our idea with these, to define its
meaning and determine its value; to substitute for the vague and
vulgar notion with which we started out the precise scientific
definition we arrive at, and for the impure metal we received the
refined metal we recovered, constituted the prevalent method taught by
the philosophers under the name of analysis, and which sums up the
whole progress of the century.  - Up to this point, and not farther,
they are right; truth, every truth, is found in observable things, and
only from these can it be derived; there is no other pathway leading
to discovery.-The operation, undoubtedly, is productive only when the
vein is rich, and we possess the means of extracting the ore.  To
obtain a just notion of government, of religion, of right, of wealth,
a man must be a historian beforehand, a jurisconsult and economist,
and have gathered up myriad of facts; and, besides all this, he must
possess a vast erudition, an experienced and professional
perspicacity.  If these conditions are only partially complied with,
the result will only be a half finished product or a doubtful alloy, a
few rough drafts of the sciences, the rudiments of pedagogy as with
Rousseau, of political economy with Quesnay, Smith, and Turgot, of
linguistics with Des Brosses, and of arithmetical morals and criminal
legislation with Bentham.  Finally, if none of these conditions are
complied with, the same efforts will, in the hands of philosophical
amateurs and oratorical charlatans, undoubtedly only produce
mischievous compounds and destructive explosions.  -  Nevertheless
good procedure remains good even when ignorant and the impetuous men
make a bad use of it; and if we of to day resume the abortive effort
of the eighteenth century, it should be within the guidelines they set
out.

_____________________________________________________________________

Notes:

[1].  "Philosophiœ naturalis principia," 1687; "Optics," 1704.

[2] See concerning this development Comte's "Philosophie Positive,"
vol.  I.  -  At the beginning of the eighteenth century, mathematical
instruments are carried to such perfection as to warrant the belief
that all physical phenomena may be analyzed, light, electricity,
sound, crystallization, heat, elasticity, cohesion and other effects
of molecular forces.  -  See "Whewell's History of the Inductive
Sciences.  II., III.

[3] The travels of La Condamine in Peru and of Maupertuis in
Lapland.

[4] Buffon, "Théorie de la terre," 1749; "Epoques de la Nature,"
1788.  - "Carte géologique de l'Auvergne," by Desmarets, 1766.

[5] See a lecture by M. Lacaze-Duthier on Lamarck, "Revue
Scientifique," III.  276-311.

[6] Buffon, "Histoire Naturelle, II.  340: "All living beings
contain a vast quantity of living and active molecules.  Vegetal and
animal life seem to be only the result of the actions of all the small
lives peculiar to each of the active molecules whose life is
primitive." Cf.  Diderot, "Revue d'Alembert."

[8] "Philosophie de Newton," 1738, and "Physique," by Voltaire.  -
Cf.  du Bois-Raymond, "Voltaire physician," (Revue des Cours
Scientifique, V.  539), and Saigey, "la Physique de Voltaire,"  -  "Had
Voltaire," writes Lord Brougham, "continued to devote himself to
experimental physics he would undoubtedly have inscribed his name
among those of the greatest discoverers of his age."

[9] See his "Langue des Calculs," and his "Art de Raisonner."

[10] For a popular exposition of these ideas see Voltaire, passim,
and particularly the "Micromégas" and "Les Oreilles du Comte de
Chesterfield."

[11] Cf.  Buffon, ibid..  I.  31: "Those who imagine a reply with
final causes do not reflect that they take the effect for the cause.
The relationship which things bear to us having no influence whatever
on their origin, moral convenience can never become a physical
explanation."  -  Voltaire, "Candide": "When His High Mightiness sends
a vessel to Egypt is he in any respect embarrassed about the comfort
of the mice that happen to be aboard of it?"

[12] Buffon, ibid.  .  "Supplement," II.  513; IV.  ("Epoques de la
Nature"), 65, 167.  According to his experiments with the cooling of a
cannon ball he based the following periods: From the glowing fluid
mass of the planet to the fall of rain 35,000 years.  From the
beginning of life to its actual condition 40,000 years.  From its
actual condition to the entire congealing of it and the extinction of
life 93,000 years.  He gives these figures simply as the minima.  We now
know that they are much too limited.

[13] Buffon, Histoire Naturelle, ib.  I.  12: "The first truth
derived from this patient investigation of nature is, perhaps, a
humiliating truth for man, that of taking his place in the order of
animals."

[14] Voltaire, "Philosophie, Du principe d'action:" "All beings,
without exception, are subject to invariable laws."

[15] Voltaire "Essay sur les Mœurs,", chap.  CXLVII., the summary;
"The intelligent reader readily perceives that he must believe only in
those great events which appear plausible, and view with pity the
fables with which fanaticism, romantic taste and credulity have at all
times filled the world."

[16]  Note this expression," exegetical methods".  (Chambers defines
an exegetist as one who interprets or expounds.) Taine refers to
methods which should allow the Jacobins, socialists, communists, and
other ideologists to, from an irrefutable idea or expression, to
deduct, infer, conclude and draw firm and, to them, irrefutable
conclusions.  (SR.)

[17] "Traité de Metaphysique," chap.  I.  "Having fallen on this
little heap of mud, and with no more idea of man than man has of the
inhabitants of Mars and Jupiter, I set foot on the shore of the ocean
of the country of Caffraria and at once began to search for a man.  I
encounter monkeys, elephants and Negroes, with gleams of imperfect
intelligence, etc" - The new method is here clearly apparent.

[18] "Introduction à l'Essay sur les Mœurs: Des Sauvages." -
Buffon, in "Epoques de la nature," the seventh epoch, precedes Darwin
in his ideas on the modifications of the useful species of animals.

[19] Voltaire, "Remarques de l'essay sur les Mœurs." "We may speak
of this people in connection with theology but they are not entitled
to a prominent place in history." - "Entretien entre A, B, C," the
seventh.

[20] Franklin defined man as a maker of tools.

[21] Condorcet, "Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de
l'esprit humain."

[22] Montesquieu: "Esprit des Lois," preface.  "I, at first,
examined men, thinking that, in this infinite diversity of laws and
customs, they were not wholly governed by their fancies.  I brought
principles to bear and I found special cases yielding to them as if
naturally, the histories of all nations being simply the result of
these, each special law being connected with another law or depending
on some general law."

[23] Pinel, (1791), Esquirol (1838), on mental diseases.  -
Prochaska, Legallois (1812) and then Flourens for vivisection.  -
Hartley and James Mill at the end of the eighteenth century follow
Condillac on the same psychological road; all contemporary
psychologists have entered upon it.  (Wundt, Helmholz, Fechner, in
Germany, Bain, Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer and Carpenter, in
England).

[24] Condillac, passim, and especially in his last two works the
"Logique," and the "Langue des Calculs."





CHAPTER II.  THE CLASSIC SPIRIT, THE SECOND ELEMENT.

  This grand and magnificent system of new truths resembles a tower
of which the first story, quickly finished, at once becomes accessible
to the public.  The public ascends the structure and is requested by
its constructors to look about, not at the sky and at surrounding
space, but right before it, towards the ground, so that it may at last
become familiar with the country in which it lives.  Certainly, the
point of view is good, and the advice is well thought-out.  The
conclusion that the public will have an accurate view is not
warranted, for the state of its eyes must be examined, to ascertain
whether it is near or far-sighted, or if the retina naturally, or
through habit, is sensitive to certain colors.  In the same way the
French of the eighteenth century must be considered, the structure of
their inward vision, that is to say, the fixed form of their
intelligence which they are bringing with them, unknowingly and
unwillingly, up upon their new tower.

I.  THROUGH COLORED GLASSES.

Its signs, duration and power.  - Its origin and public supporters.
- Its vocabulary, grammar and style.  - Its method, merits and defects.

  This fixed intelligence consists of the classic spirit, which
applied to the scientific acquisitions of the period, produces the
philosophy of the century and the doctrines of the Revolution.  Various
signs denote its presence, and notably its oratorical, regular and
correct style, wholly consisting of ready-made phrases and contiguous
ideas.  It lasts two centuries, from Malherbe and Balzac to Delille and
de Fontanes, and during this long period, no man of intellect, save
two or three, and then only in private memoirs, as in the case of
Saint-Simon, also in familiar letters like those of the marquis and
bailly de Mirabeau, either dares or can withdraw himself from its
empire.  Far from disappearing with the ancient regime it forms the
matrix out of which every discourse and document issues, even the
phrases and vocabulary of the Revolution.  Now, what is more effective
than a ready-made mold, enforced, accepted, in which by virtue of
natural tendency, of tradition and of education, everyone can enclose
their thinking? This one, accordingly, is a historic force, and of the
highest order; to understand it let us consider how it came into
being.  -- It appeared together with the regular monarchy and polite
conversation, and it accompanies these, not accidentally, but
naturally and automatically.  For it is product of the new society, of
the new regime and its customs: I mean of an aristocracy left idle due
the encroaching monarchy, of people well born and well educated who,
withdrawn from public activity, fall back on conversation and pass
their leisure sampling the different serious or refined pleasures of
the intellect.[1] Eventually, they have no other role nor interest
than to talk, to listen, to entertain themselves agreeably and with
ease, on all subjects, grave or gay, which may interest men or even
women of society, that's their great affair.  In the seventeenth
century they are called "les honnêtes gens"[2] and from now on a
writer, even the most abstract, addresses himself to them.  "A
gentleman," says Descartes, "need not have read all books nor have
studiously acquired all that is taught in the schools;" and he
entitles his last treatise, "A search for Truth according to natural
light, which alone, without aid of Religion or Philosophy, determines
the truths a gentleman should possess on all matters forming the
subjects of his thoughts."[3] In short, from one end of his philosophy
to the other, the only qualification he demands of his readers is
"natural good sense" added to the common stock of experience acquired
by contact with the world.  - As these make up the audience they are
likewise the judges.  "One must study the taste of the court," says
Molière,[4] "for in no place are verdicts more just .  .  .  With simple
common sense and intercourse with people of refinement, a habit of
mind is there obtained which, without comparison, forms a more
accurate, judgment of things than the rusty attainments of the
pedants." From this time forth, it may be said that the arbiter of
truth and of taste is not, as before, an erudite Scaliger, but a man
of the world, a La Rochefoucauld, or a Tréville.[5] The pedant and,
after him, the savant, the specialist, is set aside.  "True honest
people," says Nicole after Pascal, "require no sign.  They need not be
divined; they join in the conversation going on as they enter the
room.  They are not styled either poets or surveyors, but they are the
judges of all these."[6] In the eighteenth century they constitute the
sovereign authority.  In the great crowd of blockheads sprinkled with
pedants, there is, says Voltaire, "a small group apart called good
society, which, rich, educated and polished, forms, you might say,
the flower of humanity; it is for this group that the greatest men
have labored; it is this group which accords social recognition."[7]
Admiration, favor, importance, belong not to those who are worthy of
it but to those who address themselves to this group.  "In 1789," said
the Abbé Maury, "the French Academy alone enjoyed any esteem in
France, and it really bestowed a standing.  That of the Sciences
signified nothing in public opinion, any more than that of
Inscriptions.  .  .  The languages is considered a science for fools.
D'Alembert was ashamed of belonging to the Academy of Sciences.  Only a
handful of people listen to a mathematician, a chemist, etc.  but the
man of letters, the lecturer, has the world at his feet."[8]  - Under
such a strong pressure the mind necessarily follows a literary and
verbal route in conformity with the exigencies, the proprieties, the
tastes, and the degree of attention and of instruction of its
public.[9] Hence the classic mold, - formed out of the habit of
speaking, writing and thinking for a drawing room audience.[10]

This is immediately evident in its style and language.  Between
Amyot, Rabelais and Montaigne on the one hand, and Châteaubriand,
Victor Hugo and Honoré de Balzac on the other, classic French comes
into being and dies.  From the very first it is described at the
language of "honest people." It is fashioned not merely for them, but
by them, and Vaugelas,[11] their secretary, devotes himself for thirty
years to the registry of decisions according to the usages only of
good society.  Hence, throughout, both in vocabulary and in grammar,
the language is refashioned over and over again, according to the cast
of their intellects, which is the prevailing intellect.  -

 In the first place the vocabulary is diminished:

* Most of the words specially employed on erudite and technical
subjects, expressions that are too Greek or too Latin, terms peculiar
to the schools, to science, to occupations, to the household, are
excluded from discourse;

* those too closely denoting a particular occupation or profession
are not considered proper in general conversation.

* A vast number of picturesque and expressive words are dropped,
all that are crude, gaulois or naifs, all that are local and
provincial, or personal and made-up, all familiar and proverbial
locutions,[12] many brusque, familiar and frank turns of thought,
every haphazard, telling metaphor, almost every description of
impulsive and dexterous utterance throwing a flash of light into the
imagination and bringing into view the precise, colored and complete
form, but of which a too vivid impression would run counter to the
proprieties of polite conversation.

 "One improper word," said Vaugelas, "is all that is necessary to
bring a person in society into contempt,"

and, on the eve of the Revolution, an objectionable term denounced
by Madame de Luxembourg still consigns a man to the rank of "espèces,"
because correct expression is ever an element of good manners.  -
Language, through this constant scratching, is attenuated and becomes
colorless: Vaugelas estimates that one-half of the phrases and terms
employed by Amyot are set aside.[13] With the exception of La
Fontaine, an isolated and spontaneous genius, who reopens the old
sources, and La Bruyère, a bold seeker, who opens a fresh source, and
Voltaire an incarnate demon who, in his anonymous and pseudonymous
writings, gives the rein to the violent, crude expressions of his
inspiration,[14] the terms which are most appropriate fall into
desuetude.  One day, Gresset, in a discourse at the Academy, dares
utter four or five of these,[15] relating, I believe, to carriages and
head-dresses, whereupon murmurs at once burst forth.  During his long
retreat he had become provincial and lost the touch.  - By degrees,
discourses are composed of "general expressions" only.  These are even
employed, in accordance with Buffon's precept, to designate concrete
objects.  They are more in conformity with the polished courtesy which
smoothes over, appeases, and avoids rough or familiar expressions, to
which some views appear gross or rude unless partly hidden by a veil.
This makes it easier for the superficial listener; prevailing terms
alone will immediately arouse current and common ideas; they are
intelligible to every man from the single fact that he belongs to the
drawing-room; special terms, on the contrary, demand an effort of the
memory or of the imagination.  Suppose that, in relation to Franks or
to savages, I should mention "a battle-ax," which would be at once
understood; should I mention a "tomahawk," or a "francisque,"[16] many
would imagine that I was speaking Teuton or Iroquois.[17] In this
respect the more fashionable and refined the style, the more
punctilious the effort.  Every appropriate term is banished from
poetry; if one happens to enter the mind it must be evaded or replaced
by a paraphrase.  An eighteenth century poet can hardly permit himself
to employ more than one-third of the dictionary, poetic language at
last becomes so restricted as to compel a man with anything to say not
to express himself in verse.[18]

On the other hand the more you prune the more you thin out.  Reduced
to a select vocabulary the Frenchman deals with fewer subjects, but he
describes them more agreeably and more clearly.  "Courtesy, accuracy",
(Urbanité, exactitude!), these two words, born at the same time with
the French Academy, describes in a nutshell the reform of which it is
the tool, and which the drawing-room, by it, and alongside of it,
imposes on the public.  Grand seigniors in retirement, and unoccupied
fine ladies, enjoy the examination of the subtleties of words for the
purpose of composing maxims, definitions and characters.  With
admirable scrupulousness and infinitely delicate tact, writers and
people society apply themselves to weighing each word and each phrase
in order to fix its sense, to measure its force and bearing, to
determine its affinities, use and connections This work of precision
is carried on from the earliest academicians, Vaugelas, Chapelain and
Conrart, to the end of the classic epoch, in the Synonymes by Bauzée
and by Girard, in the Remarque by Duclos, in the Commentaire by
Voltaire on Corneille, in the Lycée by la Harpe,[19] in the efforts,
the example, the practice and the authority of the great and the
inferior writers of which all are correct.  Never did architects,
obliged to use ordinary broken highway stones in building, better
understand each piece, its dimensions, its shape, its resistance, its
possible connections and suitable position.  - Once this was learned,
the task was to construct with the least trouble and with the utmost
solidity; the grammar was consequently changed at the same time and in
the same way as the dictionary.  Hence no longer permitting the words
to reflect the way impressions and emotions were felt; they now
had to be regularly and rigorously assigned according to the
invariable hierarchy of concepts.  The writer may no longer begin his
text with the leading figure or the main purpose of his story; the
setting is given and the places assigned beforehand.  Each part of the
discourse has its own place; no omission or transposition is
permitted, as was done in the sixteenth century[20].  All parts must be
included, each in its definite place: at first the subject of the
sentence with its appendices, then the verb, then the object direct,
and, finally, the indirect connections.  In this way the sentence forms
a graduated scaffolding, the substance coming foremost, then the
quality, then the modes and varieties of the quality, just as a good
architect in the first place poses his foundation, then the building,
then the accessories, economically and prudently, with a view to adapt
each section of the edifice to the support of the section following
after it.  No sentence demands any less attention than another, nor is
there any in which one may not at every step verify the connection or
incoherence of the parts.[21]  -  The procedure used in arranging a
simple sentence also governs that of the period, the paragraph and the
series of paragraphs; it forms the style as it forms the syntax.  Each
small edifice occupies a distinct position, and but one, in the great
total edifice.  As the discourse advances, each section must in turn
file in, never before, never after, no parasitic member being allowed
to intrude, and no regular member being allowed to encroach on its
neighbor, while all these members bound together by their very
positions must move onward, combining all their forces on one single
point.  Finally, we have for the first time in a writing, natural and
distinct groups, complete and compact harmonies, none of which
infringe on the others or allow others to infringe on them.  It is no
longer allowable to write haphazard, according to the caprice of one's
inspiration, to discharge one's ideas in bulk, to let oneself be
interrupted by parentheses, to string along interminable rows of
citations and enumerations.  An end is proposed; some truth is to be
demonstrated, some definition to be ascertained, some conviction to be
brought about; to do this we must march, and ever directly onward.
Order, sequence, progress, proper transitions, constant development
constitute the characteristics of this style.  To such an extent is
this pushed, that from the very first, personal correspondence,
romances, humorous pieces, and all ironical and gallant effusions,
consist of morsels of systematic eloquence.[22] At the Hôtel
Rambouillet, the explanatory period is displayed with as much fullness
and as rigorously as with Descartes himself.  One of the words most
frequently occurring with Mme.  de Scudéry is the conjunction for (in
French car).  Passion is worked out through close-knit arguments.
Drawing room compliments stretch along in sentences as finished as
those of an academical dissertation.  Scarcely completed, the
instrument already discloses its aptitudes.  We are aware of its being
made to explain, to demonstrate, to persuade and to popularize.
Condillac, a century later, is justified in saying that it is in
itself a systematic means of decomposition and of recomposition, a
scientific method analogous to arithmetic and algebra.  At the very
least it possesses the incontestable advantage of starting with a few
ordinary terms, and of leading the reader along with facility and
promptness, by a series of simple combinations, up to the
loftiest.[23] By virtue of this, in 1789, the French tongue ranks
above every other.  The Berlin Academy promises a prize to for anyone
who best can explain its pre-eminence.  It is spoken throughout Europe.
No other language is used in diplomacy.  As formerly with Latin, it is
international, and appears that, from now on, it is to be the
preferred tool whenever men are to reason.

It is the organ only of a certain kind of reasoning, la raison
raisonnante, that requiring the least preparation for thought, giving
itself as little trouble as possible, content with its acquisitions,
taking no pains to increase or renew them, incapable of, or unwilling
to embrace the plenitude and complexity of the facts of real life.  In
its purism, in its disdain of terms suited to the occasion, in its
avoidance of lively sallies, in the extreme regularity of its
developments, the classic style is powerless to fully portray or to
record the infinite and varied details of experience.  It rejects any
description of the outward appearance of reality, the immediate
impressions of the eyewitness, the heights and depths of passion, the
physiognomy, at once so composite yet absolute personal, of the
breathing individual, in short, that unique harmony of countless
traits, blended together and animated, which compose not human
character in general but one particular personality, and which a
Saint-Simon, a Balzac, or a Shakespeare himself could not render if
the rich language they used, and which was enhanced by their
temerities, did not contribute its subtleties to the multiplied
details of their observation.[24] Neither the Bible, nor Homer, nor
Dante, nor Shakespeare[25] could be translated with this style.  Read
Hamlet's monologue in Voltaire and see what remains of it, an abstract
piece of declamation, with about as much of the original in it as
there is of Othello in his Orosmane.  Look at Homer and then at Fenelon
in the island of Calypso; the wild, rocky island, where "gulls and
other sea-birds with long wings," build their nests, becomes in pure
French prose an orderly park arranged "for the pleasure of the eye."
In the eighteenth century, contemporary novelists, themselves
belonging to the classic epoch, Fielding, Swift, Defoe, Sterne and
Richardson, are admitted into France only after excisions and much
weakening; their expressions are too free and their scenes are to
impressive; their freedom, their coarseness, their peculiarities,
would form blemishes; the translator abbreviates, softens, and
sometimes, in his preface, apologizes for what he retains.  Room is
found, in this language, only for a partial lifelikeness, for some of
the truth, a scanty portion, and which constant refining daily renders
still more scanty.  Considered in itself, the classic style is always
tempted to accept slight, insubstantial commonplaces for its subject
materials.  It spins them out, mingles and weaves them together; only a
fragile filigree, however, issues from its logical apparatus; we may
admire the elegant workmanship; but in practice, the work is of
little, none, or negative service.

From these characteristics of style we divine those of the mind for
which it serves as a tool.  -  Two principal operations constitute the
activity of the human understanding.  --  Observing things and events, it
receives a more or less complete, profound and exact impression of
these; and after this, turning away from them, it analyses its
impressions, and classifies, distributes, and more or less skillfully
expresses the ideas derived from them.  -  In the second of these
operations the classicist is superior.  Obliged to adapt himself to his
audience, that is to say, to people of society who are not
specialists and yet critical, he necessarily carries to perfection the
art of exciting attention and of making himself heard; that is to say,
the art of composition and of writing.  - With patient industry, and
multiplied precautions, he carries the reader along with him by a
series of easy rectilinear conceptions, step by step, omitting none,
beginning with the lowest and thus ascending to the highest, always
progressing with steady and measured peace, securely and agreeably as
on a promenade.  No interruption or diversion is possible: on either
side, along the road, balustrades keep him within bounds, each idea
extending into the following one by such an insensible transition,
that he involuntarily advances, without stopping or turning aside,
until brought to the final truth where he is to be seated.  Classic
literature throughout bears the imprint of this talent; there is no
branch of it into which the qualities of a good discourse do not enter
and form a part.  - They dominate those sort of works which, in
themselves, are only half-literary, but which, by its help, become
fully so, transforming manuscripts into fine works of art which their
subject-matter would have classified as scientific works, as reports
of action, as historical documents, as philosophical treatises, as
doctrinal expositions, as sermons, polemics, dissertations and
demonstrations.  It transforms even dictionaries and operates from
Descartes to Condillac, from Bossuet to Buffon and Voltaire, from
Pascal to Rousseau and Beaumarchais, in short, becoming prose almost
entirely, even in official dispatches, diplomatic and private
correspondence, from Madame de Sévigné to Madame du Deffant; including
so many perfect letters flowing from the pens of women who were
unaware of it .  - Such prose is paramount in those works which, in
themselves, are literary, but which derive from it an oratorical turn.
Not only does it impose a rigid plan, a regular distribution of
parts[26] in dramatic works, accurate proportions, suppressions and
connections, a sequence and progress, as in a passage of eloquence,
but again it tolerates only the most perfect discourse.  There is no
character that is not an accomplished orator; with Corneille and
Racine, with Molière himself, the confidant, the barbarian king, the
young cavalier, the drawing room coquette, the valet, all show
themselves adepts in the use of language.  Never have we encountered
such adroit introductions, such well-arranged evidence, such just
reflections, such delicate transitions, such conclusive summing ups.
Never have dialogues borne such a strong resemblance to verbal
sparring matches.  Each narration, each portrait, each detail of
action, might be detached and serve as a good example for schoolboys,
along with the masterpieces of the ancient tribune.  So strong is this
tendency that, on the approach of the final moment, in the agony of
death, alone and without witnesses, the character finds the means to
plead his own frenzy and die eloquently.

II.  ITS ORIGINAL DEFICIENCY.

Its original deficiency.  - Signs of this in the 17th century.  - It
grows with time and success.  - Proofs of this growth in the 18th
century.  - Serious poetry, the drama, history and romances.  - Short-
sighted views of man and of human existence.

This excess indicates a deficiency.  In the two operations which the
human mind performs, the classicist is more successful in the second
than in the first.  The second, indeed, stands in the way of the first,
the obligation of always speaking correctly makes him refrain from
saying all that ought to be said.  With him the form is more important
than abundant contents, the firsthand observations which serve as a
living source losing, in the regulated channels to which they are
confined, their force, depth and impetuosity.  Real poetry, able to
convey dream and illusion, cannot be brought forth.  Lyric poetry
proves abortive, and likewise the epic poem.[27] Nothing sprouts on
these distant fields, remote and sublime, where speech unites with
music and painting.  Never do we hear the involuntary scream of intense
torment, the lonely confession of a distraught soul,[28] pouring out
his heart to relieve himself.  When a creation of characters is
imperative, as in dramatic poetry, the classic mold fashions but one
kind, that which through education, birth, or impersonation, always
speak correctly, in other words, like so many people of high society.
No others are portrayed on the stage or elsewhere, from Corneille and
Racine to Marivaux and Beaumarchais.  So strong is the habit that it
imposes itself even on La Fontaine's animals, on the servants of
Molière, on Montesquieu's Persians, and on the Babylonians, the
Indians and the Micromégas of Voltaire.  - It must be stated,
furthermore, that these characters are only partly real.  In real
persons two kinds of characteristics may be noted; the first, few in
number, which he or she shares with others of their kind and which any
reader readily may identify; and the other kind, of which there are a
great many, describing only one particular person and these are much
more difficult to discover.  Classic art concerns itself only with the
former; it purposely effaces, neglects or subordinates the latter.  It
does not build individual persons but generalized characters, a king,
a queen, a young prince, a confidant, a high-priest, a captain of the
guards, seized by some passion, habit or inclination, such as love,
ambition, fidelity or perfidy, a despotic or a yielding temper, some
species of wickedness or of native goodness.  As to the circumstances
of time and place, which, amongst others, exercise a most powerful
influence in shaping and diversifying man, it hardly notes them, even
setting them aside.  In a tragedy the scene is set everywhere and any
time, the contrary, that the action takes place nowhere in no specific
epoch, is equally valid.  It may take place in any palace or in any
temple,[29] in which, to get rid of all historic or personal impressions,
habits and costumes are introduced conventionally, being neither French
nor foreign, nor ancient, nor modern.  In this abstract world the
address is always "you"(as opposed to the familiar thou),[30]
"Seigneur" and "Madame," the noble style always clothing the most
different characters in the same dress.  When Corneille and Racine,
through the stateliness and elegance of their verse, afford us a
glimpse of contemporary figures they do it unconsciously, imagining
that they are portraying man in himself; and, if we of the present
time recognize in their pieces either the gentleman, the duelists, the
bullies, the politicians or the heroines of the Fronde, or the
courtiers, princes and bishops, the ladies and gentlemen in waiting of
the regular monarchy, it is because they have inadvertently dipped
their brush in their own experience, some of its color having fallen
accidentally on the bare ideal outline which they wished to trace.  We
have simply a contour, a general sketch, filled up with the harmonious
gray tone of correct diction.  - Even in comedy, necessarily employing
current habits, even with Molière, so frank and so bold, the model is
unfinished, all individual peculiarities being suppressed, the face
becoming for a moment a theatrical mask, and the personage, especially
when talking in verse, sometimes losing its animation in becoming the
mouth-piece for a monologue or a dissertation.[31]  The stamp of rank,
condition or fortune, whether gentleman or bourgeois, provincial or
Parisian, is frequently overlooked.[32]  We are rarely made to
appreciate physical externals, as in Shakespeare, the temperament, the
state of the nervous system, the bluff or drawling tone, the impulsive
or restrained action, the emaciation or obesity of a character.[33]
Frequently no trouble is taken to find a suitable name, this being
either Chrysale, Orgon, Damis, Dorante, or Valère.  The name designates
only a simple quality, that of a father, a youth, a valet, a grumbler,
a gallant, and, like an ordinary cloak, fitting indifferently all
forms alike, as it passes from the wardrobe of Molière to that of
Regnard, Destouche, Lesage or Marivaux.[34]  The character lacks the
personal badge, the unique, authentic appellation serving as the
primary stamp of an individual.  All these details and circumstances,
all these aids and accompaniments of a man, remain outside of the
classic theory.  To secure the admission of some of them required the
genius of Molière, the fullness of his conception, the wealth of his
observation, the extreme freedom of his pen.  It is equally true again
that he often omits them, and that, in other cases, he introduces only
a small number of them, because he avoids giving to these general
characters a richness and complexity that might interfere with the
story.  The simpler the theme the clearer its development, the first
duty of the author throughout this literature being to clearly develop
the restricted theme of which he makes a selection.

There is, accordingly, a radical defect in the classic spirit, the
defect of its qualities, and which, at first kept within proper
bounds, contributes towards the production of its purest master-
pieces, but which, in accordance with the universal law, goes on
increasing and turns into a vice through the natural effect of age,
use, and success.  Contracted at the start, it is to become yet more
so.  In the eighteenth century the description of real life, of a
specific person, just as he is in nature and in history, that is to
say, an undefined unit, a rich plexus, a complete organism of
peculiarities and traits, superposed, entangled and co-ordinated, is
improper.  The capacity to receive and contain all these is wanting.
Whatever can be discarded is cast aside, and to such an extent that
nothing is left at last but a condensed extract, an evaporated
residuum, an almost empty name, in short, what is called a hollow
abstraction.  The only characters in the eighteenth century exhibiting
any life are the off-hand sketches, made in passing and as if
contraband, by Voltaire, Baron de Thundertentronk and Milord Watthen,
the lesser figures in his stories, and five or six portraits of
secondary rank, Turcaret, Gil Blas, Marianne, Manon Lescaut, Rameau,
and Figaro, two or three of the rough sketches of Crébillon the
younger and of Collé, all so many works in which sap flows through a
familiar knowledge of things, comparable with those of the minor
masters in painting, Watteau, Fragonard, Saint-Aubin, Moreau, Lancret,
Pater, and Beaudouin, and which, accepted with difficulty, or as a
surprise, by the official drawing room are still to subsist after the
grander and soberer canvases shall have  become moldy through their
wearisome exhalations.  Everywhere else the sap dries up, and, instead
of blooming plants, we encounter only flowers of painted paper.  What
are all the serious poems, from the "la Henriade" of Voltaire to the
"Mois" by Roucher or the "l'Imagination" by Delille, but so many
pieces of rhetoric garnished with rhymes? Examine the innumerable
tragedies and comedies of which Grimm and Collé gives us mortuary
extracts, even the meritorious works of Voltaire and Crébillon, and
later, those of authors of repute, Du Belloy, Laharpe, Ducis, and
Marie Chénier? Eloquence, art, situations, correct verse, all exist in
these except human nature; the personages are simply well-taught
puppets, and generally mere mouthpieces by which the author makes his
declamation public; Greeks, Romans, Medieval knights, Turks, Arabs,
Peruvians, Giaours, or Byzantines, they have all the same declamatory
mechanisms.  The public, meanwhile, betrays no surprise.  It is not
aware of history.  It assumes that humanity is everywhere the same.  It
establishes the success alike of the "Incas" by Marmontel, and of
"Gonsalve" and the "Nouvelles" by Florian; also of the peasants,
mechanics, Negroes, Brazilians, Parsees, and Malabarites that appear
before it churning out their exaggerations.  Man is simply regarded as
a reasoning being, alike in all ages and alike in all places;
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre endows his pariah with this habit, like
Diderot, in his Tahitians.  The one recognized principle is that every
human being must think and talk like a book.  - And how inadequate
their historical background! With the exception of "Charles XII.," a
contemporary on whom Voltaire, thanks to eye eye-witnesses, bestows
fresh life, also his spirited sketches of Englishmen, Frenchmen,
Spaniards, Italians and Germans, scattered through his stories, where
are real persons to be found? With Hume, Gibbon and Robertson,
belonging to the French school, and who are at once adopted in France,
in the researches into our middle ages of Dubos and of Mably, in the
"Louis XI" of Duclos, in the "Anarcharsis" of Barthélemy, even in the
"Essai sur les Moeurs," and in the "Siecle de Louis XIV" of Voltaire,
even in the "Grandeur des Romains," and the "Esprit des Lois" of
Montesquieu, what peculiar deficiency! Erudition, criticism, common
sense, an almost exact exposition of dogmas and of institutions,
philosophic views of the relationships between events and on the
general run of these, nothing is lacking but the people! On reading
these it seems as if the climates, institutions and civilizations
which so completely modifies the human intellect, are simply so many
outworks, so many fortuitous exteriors, which, far from reflecting its
depths scarcely penetrate beneath its surface.  The vast differences
separating the men of two centuries, or of two peoples, escape them
entirely.[35] The ancient Greek, the early Christian, the conquering
Teuton, the feudal man, the Arab of Mahomet, the German, the
Renaissance Englishman, the puritan, appear in their books as in
engravings and frontispieces, with some difference in costume, but the
same bodies, the same faces, the same countenances, toned down,
obliterated, proper, adapted to the conventionalities of good manners.
That sympathetic imagination by which the writer enters into the mind
of another, and reproduces in himself a system of habits and feelings
so different from his own, is the talent the most absent in the
eighteenth century.  With the exception of Diderot, who uses it badly
and capriciously, it almost entirely disappears in the last half of
the century.  Consider in turn, during the same period, in France and
in England, where it is most extensively used, the romance, a sort of
mirror everywhere transportable, the best adapted to reflect all
phrases of nature and of life.  After reading the series of English
novelists, Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and
Goldsmith down to Miss Burney and Miss Austen, I have become familiar
with England in the eighteenth century; I have encountered clergymen,
country gentlemen, farmers, innkeepers, sailors, people of every
condition in life, high and low; I know the details of fortunes and of
careers, how much is earned, how much is expended, how journeys are
made and how people eat and drink: I have accumulated for myself a
file of precise biographical events, a complete picture in a thousand
scenes of an entire community, the amplest stock of information to
guide me should I wish to frame a history of this vanished world.  On
reading a corresponding list of French novelists, the younger
Crébillon, Rousseau, Marmontel, Laclos, Restif de la Breton, Louvet,
Madame de Staël, Madame de Genlis and the rest, including Mercier and
even Mme.  Cottin, I scarcely take any notes; all precise and
instructive little facts are left out; I find civilities, polite acts,
gallantries, mischief-making, social dissertations and nothing else.
They carefully abstain from mentioning money, from giving me figures,
from describing a wedding, a trial, the administration of a piece of
property; I am ignorant of the situation of a curate, of a rustic
noble, of a resident prior, of a steward, of an intendant.  Whatever
relates to a province or to the rural districts, to the bourgeoisie or
to the shop,[36] to the army or to a soldier, to the clergy or to
convents, to justice or to the police, to business or to housekeeping
remains vaguely in my mind or is falsified; to clear up any point I am
obliged to recur to that marvelous Voltaire who, on laying aside the
great classic coat, finds plenty of elbow room and tells all.  On the
organs of society of vital importance, on the practices and
regulations that provoke revolutions, on feudal rights and seigniorial
justice, on the mode of recruiting and governing monastic bodies, on
the revenue measures of the provinces, of corporations and of trade-
unions, on the tithes and the corvées,[37] literature provides me with
scarcely any information.  Drawing-rooms and men of letters are
apparently its sole material.  The rest is null and void.  Outside the
good society that is able to converse France appears perfectly empty.
- On the approach of the Revolution the elimination increases.  Look
through the harangues of the clubs and of the tribune, through
reports, legislative bills and pamphlets, and through the mass of
writings prompted by passing and exciting events; in none of them do
we see any sign of the human creature as we see him in the fields and
in the street; he is always regarded as a simple robot, a well known
mechanism.  Among writers he was a moment ago a dispenser of
commonplaces, among politicians he is now a pliable voter ; touch him
in the proper place and he responds in the desired manner.  Facts are
never apparent; only abstractions, long arrays of sentences on nature,
Reason, and the people, on tyrants and liberty, like inflated
balloons, uselessly conflicting with each other in space.  Were we not
aware that all this would terminate in terrible practical effects then
we could regard it as competition in logic, as school exercises,
academic parades, or ideological compositions.  It is, in fact,
Ideology, the last product of the century, which will stamp the
classic spirit with its final formula and last word.

III.  THE MATHEMATICAL METHOD.

The philosophic method in conformity with the Classic Sprit.  -
Ideology.  - Abuse of the mathematical process.  - Condillac, Rousseau,
Mably, Condorcet, Volney, Sieyès, Cabanis, and de Tracy.  - Excesses of
simplification and boldness of organization.

 The natural process of the classic spirit is to pursue in every
research, with the utmost confidence, without either reserve or
precaution, the mathematical method: to derive, limit and isolate a
few of the simplest generalized notions and then, setting experience
aside, comparing them, combining them, and, from the artificial
compound thus obtained, by pure reasoning, deduce all the consequences
they involve.  It is so deeply implanted as to be equally encountered
in both centuries, as well with Descartes, Malebranche[38] and the
partisans of innate ideas as with the partisans of sensation, of
physical needs and of primary instinct, Condillac, Rousseau,
Helvétius, and later, Condorcet, Volney, Sieyès, Cabanis and Destutt
de Tracy.  In vain do the latter assert that they are the followers of
Bacon and reject (the theory of) innate ideas; with another starting
point than the Cartesians they pursue the same path, and, as with the
Cartesians, after borrowing a little, they leave experience behind
them.  In this vast moral and social world, they only remove the
superficial bark from the human tree with its innumerable roots and
branches; they are unable to penetrate to or grasp at anything beyond
it; their hands cannot contain more.  They have no suspicion of
anything outside of it; the classic spirit, with limited
comprehension, is not far-reaching.  To them the bark is the entire
tree, and, the operation once completed, they retire, bearing along
with them the dry, dead epidermis, never returning to the trunk
itself.  Through intellectual incapacity and literary pride they omit
the characteristic detail, the animating fact, the specific
circumstance, the significant, convincing and complete example.
Scarcely one of these is found in the "Logique" and in the "Traité des
Sensations" by Condillac, in the "Idéologie" by Destutt de Tracy, or
in the "Rapports du Physique et du Morale" by Cabanis.[39] Never, with
them, are we on the solid and visible ground of personal observation
and narration, but always in the air, in the empty space of pure
generalities.  Condillac declares that the arithmetical method is
adapted to psychology and that the elements of our ideas can be
defined by a process analogous "to the rule of three." Sieyès holds
history in profound contempt, and believes that he had "perfected the
science of politics"[40] at one stroke, through an effort of the
brain, in the style of Descartes, who thus discovers analytic
geometry.  Destutt de Tracy, in undertaking to comment on Montesquieu,
finds that the great historian has too servilely confined himself to
history, and attempts to do the work over again by organizing society
as it should be, instead of studying society as it is.  - Never were
such systematic and superficial institutions built up with such a
moderate extract of human nature.[41] Condillac, employing sensation,
animates a statue, and then, by a process of pure reasoning, following
up its effects, as he supposes, on smell, taste, hearing, sight and
touch, fashions a complete human soul.  Rousseau, by means of a
contract, founds political association, and, with this given idea,
pulls down the constitution, government and laws of every balanced
social system.  In a book which serves as the philosophical testament
of the century,[42] Condorcet declares that this method is the "final
step of philosophy, that which places a sort of eternal barrier
between humanity and its ancient infantile errors."   "By applying it
to morals, politics and political economy the moral sciences have
progressed nearly as much as the natural sciences.  With its help we
have been able to discover the rights of man." As in mathematics, they
have been deduced from one primordial statement only, which statement,
similar to a first principle in mathematics, becomes a fact of daily
experience, seen by all and therefore self-evident.  - This school of
thought is to endure throughout the Revolution, the Empire and even
into the Restoration,[43] together with the tragedy of which it is the
sister, with the classic spirit their common parent, a primordial,
sovereign power, as dangerous as it is useful, as destructive as it is
creative, as capable of propagating error as truth, as astonishing in
the rigidity of its code, the narrow-mindedness of its yoke and in the
uniformity of its works as in the duration of its reign and the
universality of its ascendancy.[44]

___________________________________________________________________

Notes:

[1] Voltaire, "Dict.  Phil.," see the articles on Language.  "Of all
the languages in Europe the French is most generally used because it
is the best adapted to conversation.  Its character is derived from
that of the people who speak it.  For more than a hundred and fifty
years past, the French have been the most familiar with (good) society
and the first to avoid all embarrassment .  .  .  It is a better currency
than any other, even if it should lack weight."

[2] HIST: honnête homme means gentleman.  (SR.)

[3] Descartes, ed.  Cousin, XI.  333, I.  121, .  .  .  Descartes
depreciates "simple knowledge acquired without the aid of reflection,
such as languages, history, geography, and, generally, whatever is not
based on experience.  .  .  .  It is no more the duty of an honest man to
know Greek or Latin than to know the Swiss or Breton languages, nor
the history of the Romano-Germanic empire any more than of the
smallest country in Europe."

[4] Molière, "Les Femmes Savantes," and "La Critique de l'école des
femmes." The parts of Dorante with Lycidas and of Clitandre with
Trissotin.

[5] The learned Huet, (1630-1721), true to the taste of the sixteenth
century, describes this change very well from his point of view.  "When
I entered the world of letters these were still flourishing; great
reputations maintained their supremacy.  I have seen letters decline
and finally reach an almost entire decay.  For I scarcely know a person
of the present time that one can truly call a savant." The few
Benedictines like Ducange and Mabillon, and later, the academician
Fréret, the president Bouhier of Dijon, in short, the veritable
erudites exercise no influence.

[6] Nicole, "Oeuvres morales," in the second essay on Charity and
Self-love, 142.


[7] Voltaire, "Dialogues," "L'intendant des menus et l'abbé Grizel,"
129.

[8] Maury adds with his accustomed coarseness, "We, in the French
Academy, looked upon the members of the Academy of Sciences as our
valets."  - These valets at that time consisted of Lavoisier,
Fourcroy, Lagrange, Laplace, etc.  (A narrative by Joseph de Maistre,
quote by Sainte-Beuve, "Causeries du lundi," IV.  283.)

[9] This description makes me think of the contemporary attitudes
pejoratively called "politically correctness."  Thus the drawings-room
audience of the 18th century have today been replaced by the
"political correct" elite holding sway in teacher training schools,
schools of journalism, the media and hence among the television
public.  The same mechanism which moved the upper class in the 18th
century moves it in the 20th century..  (S.R.)

[10] Today in 1999 we may speak of the TV mold forced by the measured
popularity or "ratings"of the programs.  (SR.

[11] Vaugelas, "Remarques sur la langue française:" "It is the mode
of speech of the most sensible portion of the court, as well as the
mode of writing of the most sensible authors of the day.  It is better
to consult women and those who have not studied than those who are
very learned in Greek and in Latin."

[12] One of the causes of the fall and discredit of the Marquis
d'Argenson in the eighteenth century, was his habit of using these.

[13] Vaugelas, ibid..  "Although we may have eliminated one-half of
his phrases and terms we nevertheless obtain in the other half all the
riches of which we boast and of which we make a display." - Compare
together a lexicon of two or three writers of the sixteenth century
and one of two or three writers of the seventeenth.  A brief statement
of the results of the comparison is here given.  Let any one, with pen
in hand, note the differences on a hundred pages of any of these
texts, and he will be surprised at it.  Take, for examples, two writers
of the same category, and of secondary grade, Charron and Nicole.

[14] For instance, in the article "Ignorance," in the "Dict.
Philosophique."

[15] La Harpe, "Cours de Littérature," ed.  Didot.  II.  142.

[16] A battle-axe used by the Franks.  - TR.

[17] I cite an example haphazard from the "Optimiste" (1788), by
Colin d'Harleville.  In a certain description, "The scene represents a
bosquet filled with odoriferous trees."  - The classic spirit rebels
against stating the species of tree, whether lilacs, lindens or
hawthorns.  - In paintings of landscapes of this era we have the same
thing, the trees being generalized,  - of no known species.

[18] This evolution is seen today as well, television having the same
effect upon its actors as the 18th century drawing-room.  (SR.)

[19] See in the "Lycée," by la Harpe, after the analysis of each
piece, his remarks on detail in style.


[20] The omission of the pronouns, I, he, we, you, they, the article
the, and of the verb, especially the verb to be.-- Any page of
Rabelais, Amyot or Montaigne, suffices to show how numerous and
various were the transpositions.

[21] Vaugelas, ibid .  "No language is more inimical to ambiguities
and every species of obscurity."

[22] See the principal romances of the seventeenth century, the
"Roman Bourgeois," by Furetière, the "Princess de Clèves," by Madame
de Lafayette, the "Clélie," by Mme.  de Scudéry, and even Scarron's
"Roman Comique."  - See Balzac's letters , and those of Voiture and
their correspondents, the "Récit des grands jours d'Auvergne," by
Fléchier, etc.  On the oratorical peculiarities of this style cf.
Sainte-Beuve, "Port-Royal," 2nd ed.  I.  515.

[23] Voltaire, 'Esay sur le poème épique', "Our nation, regarded by
strangers as superficial is, with the pen in its hand, the wisest of
all.  Method is the dominant quality of all our writers."

[24] Milton's works are built up with 8,000.  "Shakespeare, who
displayed a greater variety of expression than probably any writer in
any language, produced all his plays with about 15,000 words and the
Old Testament says all it has to say with 5,642 words." (Max Müller,
"Lectures on the Science of language," I.  309.) - It would be
interesting to place alongside of this Racine's restricted vocabulary.
That of Mme.  de Scudery is extremely limited.  In the best romance of
the XVIIth century, the "Princesse de Clèves," the number of words is
reduced to the minimum.  The Dictionary of the old French Academy
contains 29,712 words; the Greek Thesaurus, by H.  Estienne, contains
about 150,000.

[25] Compare together the translations of the Bible made by de Sacy
and Luther; those of Homer by Dacier, Bitaubé and Lecomte de Lisle;
those of Herodotus, by Larcher and Courrier, the popular tales of
Perrault and those by Grimm, etc.


[26] See the "Discours académique," by Racine, on the reception of
Thomas Corneille: "In this chaos of dramatic poetry your illustrious
brother brought Reason on the stage, but Reason associated with all
the pomp and the ornamentation our language is capable of."


[27] Voltaire, "Essay sur le poème épique," 290.  "It must be admitted
that a Frenchman has more difficulty in writing an epic poem than
anybody else.  .  .  .  Dare I confess it? Our own is the least poetic of
all polished nations.  The works in verse the most highly esteemed in
France are those of the drama, which must be written in a familiar
style approaching conversation."

[28] Except in "Pensées," by Pascal, a few notes dotted down by a
morbidly exalted Christian, and which certainly, in the perfect work,
would not have been allowed to remain as they are.


[29] See in the Cabinet of Engravings the theatrical costumes of the
middle of the XVIIIth century.  - Nothing could be more opposed to the
spirit of the classic drama than the parts of Esther and Brittannicus,
as they are played nowadays, in the accurate costumes and with scenery
derived from late discoveries at Pompeii or Nineveh.

[30]  The formality which this indicates will be understood by those
familiar with the use of the pronoun thou in France, denoting intimacy
and freedom from restraint in contrast with ceremonious and formal
intercourse.  - Tr.

[31] See the parts of the moralizers and reasoners like Cléante in
"Tartuffe," Ariste in "Les Femmes Savantes," Chrysale in "L'Ecole des
Femmes," etc.  See the discussion between the two brothers in "Le
Festin de Pierre," III.  5; the discourse of Ergaste in "L'Ecole des
Maris"; that of Eliante, imitated from Lucretius in the "Misanthrope,"
II.  5; the portraiture, by Dorine in "Tartuffe," I.  1.  - The portrait
of the hypocrite, by Don Juan in "Le Festin de Pierre," V.  2.

[32] For instance the parts of Harpagon and Arnolphe.

[33] We see this in Tartuffe, but only through an expression of
Dorine, and not directly.  Cf.  in Shakespeare, the parts of Coriolanus,
Hotspur, Falstaff, Othello, Cleopatra, etc.

[34] Balzac passed entire days in reading the "Almanach des cent
mille adresses," also in a cab in the streets during the afternoons,
examining signs for the purpose of finding suitable names for his
characters.  This little circumstance shows the difference between two
diverse conceptions of mankind.

[35] "At the present day, whatever may be said, there is no such
thing as Frenchmen, Germans, Spaniards, and Englishmen, for all are
Europeans.  All have the same tastes, the same passions, the same
habits, none having obtained a national form through any specific
institution." Rousseau, "Sur le gouvernement de Pologne," 170.

[36] Previous to 1750 we find something about these in "Gil-Blas,"
and in "Marianne," (Mme.  Dufour the sempstress and her shop).  -
Unfortunately the Spanish travesty prevents the novels of Lesage from
being as instructive as they might be.

[37] Interesting details are found in the little stories by Diderot
as, for instance, "Les deux amis de Bourbonne." But elsewhere he is a
partisan, especially in the "Religieuse," and conveys a false
impression of things.

[38] "To attain to the truth we have only to fix our attention on the
ideas which each one finds within his own mind." (Malebranche,
"Recherche de la Vérité," book I.  ch.  1.) - "Those long chains of
reasoning, all simple and easy, which geometers use to arrive at their
most difficult demonstrations, suggested to me that all things which
come within human knowledge must follow each other in a similar
chain." (Descartes, "Discours de la Methode," I.  142).  - In the
seventeenth century In the 17th century constructions a priori were
based on ideas, in the 18th century on sensations, but always
following the same mathematical method fully displayed in the "Ethics"
of Spinoza.

[39] See especially his memoir: "De l'influence du climat sur les
habitudes morales," vague, and wholly barren of illustrations
excepting one citation from Hippocrates.

[40] These are Sieyès own words.  - He adds elsewhere, "There is no
more reality in assumed historical truths than in assumed religious
truths." ("Papiers de Sieyès," the year 1772, according to Sainte-
Beuve, "Causeries du lundi," V.  194).  - Descartes and Malebranche
already expressed this contempt for history.

[41] Today, in 1998, we know that Taine was right.  The research on
animal and human behavior, on animal and human brain circuitry, and
the behavior of the cruel human animal during the 20th century,
confirmed his views.  Still mankind persists in preferring simple
solutions and ideas to complex ones.  This is the way our brains and
our nature as gregarious animals make us think and feel.  This our
basic human nature make ambitious men able to appeal to and dominate
the crowd.  (SR.)

[42] Condorcet, "Esquisse d'un tableau historique de l'esprit
humain," ninth epoch.

[43] See the "Tableau historique," presented to the Institute by
Chénier in 1808, showing by its statements that the classic spirit
still prevails in all branches of literature.  - Cabanis died in 1818,
Volney in 1820, de Tracy and Sieyès in 1836, Daunou in 1840.  In May,
1845, Saphary and Valette are still professors of Condillac's
philosophy in the two lycées in Paris.

[44] The world did not heed Taine's warnings.  The leaders and the
masses of the Western world were to be seduced by the terrible new
ideologies of the 20th century.  The ideology of socialism persists
making good use of the revised 20th century editions of the Rights
of Man, enlarged to cover the physical well-being and standard of
living of man, woman, child and animal and in this manner allowing
the state to replace all individual responsibility and authority,
thus, as Taine saw, dealing a death blow to the family, to
individual responsibility and enterprise and to effective local
government. (SR.).






CHAPTER III.  COMBINATION OF THE TWO ELEMENTS.

I.   BIRTH OF A DOCTRINE, A REVELATION.

The doctrine, its pretensions, and its character.  - A new authority
for Reason in the regulation of human affairs.  - Government thus far
traditional.

   OUT of the scientific acquisitions thus set forth, elaborated by
the spirit we have just described, is born a doctrine, seemingly a
revelation, and which, under this title, was to claim the government
of human affairs.  On the approach of 1789 it is generally admitted
that man is living in "a century of light," in "the age of Reason;"
that, previously, the human species was in its infancy and that now it
has attained to its "majority." Truth, finally, is made manifest and,
for the first time, its reign on earth is apparent.  The right is
supreme because it is truth itself.  It must direct all things because
through its nature it is universal.  The philosophy of the eighteenth
century, in these two articles of faith, resembles a religion, the
Puritanism of the seventeenth century, and Islam in the seventh
century.  We see the same outburst of faith, hope and enthusiasm, the
same spirit of propaganda and of dominion, the same rigidity and
intolerance, the same ambition to recast man and to remodel human life
according to a preconceived type.  The new doctrine is also to have its
scholars, its dogmas, its popular catechism, its fanatics, its
inquisitors and its martyrs.  It is to speak as loudly as those
preceding it, as a legitimate authority to which dictatorship belongs
by right of birth, and against which rebellion is criminal or insane.
It differs, however, from the preceding religions in this respect,
that instead of imposing itself in the name of God, it imposes itself
in the name of Reason.

The authority, indeed, was a new one.  Up to this time, in the
control of human actions and opinions, Reason had played but a small
and subordinate part.  Both the motive and its direction were obtained
elsewhere; faith and obedience were an inheritance; a man was a
Christian and a subject because he was born Christian and subject.  --
Surrounding the nascent philosophy and the Reason which enters upon
its great investigation, is a system of recognized laws, an
established power, a reigning religion; all the stones of this
structure hold together and each story is supported by a preceding
story.  But what does the common cement consist of, and where is the
basic foundation?  --  Who sanctions all these civil regulations which
control marriages, testaments, inheritances, contracts, property and
persons, these fanciful and often contradictory regulations? In the
first place immemorial custom, varying according to the province,
according to the title to the soil, according to the quality and
condition of the person; and next, the will of the king who caused the
custom to be inscribed and who sanctioned it.  --  Who authorizes this
will, this sovereignty of the prince, this first of public
obligations? In the first place, eight centuries of possession, a
hereditary right similar to that by which each one enjoys his own
field and domain, a property established in a family and transmitted
from one eldest son to another, from the first founder of the State to
his last living successor; and, in addition to this, a religion
directing men to submit to the constituted powers.  --  And who,
finally, authorizes this religion? At first, eighteen centuries of
tradition, the immense series of anterior and concordant proofs, the
steady belief of sixty preceding generations; and after this, at the
beginning of it, the presence and teachings of Christ, then, farther
back, the creation of the world, the command and the voice of God.  --
Thus, throughout the moral and social order of things the past
justifies the present; antiquity provides its title, and if beneath
all these supports which age has consolidated, the deep primitive rock
is sought for in subterranean depths, we find it in the divine will.
--  During the whole of the seventeenth century this theory still
absorbs all souls in the shape of a fixed habit and of inward respect;
it is not open to question.  It is regarded in the same light as the
heart of the living body; whoever would lay his hand upon it would
instantly draw back, moved by a vague sentiment of its ceasing to beat
in case it were touched.  The most independent, with Descartes at the
head, "would be grieved" at being confounded with those chimerical
speculators who, instead of pursuing the beaten track of custom, dart
blindly forward "in a direct line across mountains and over
precipices." In subjecting their belief to systematic investigation
not only do they leave out and set apart "the truths of faith,"[1] but
again the dogma they think they have thrown out remains in their mind
latent and active, to guide them on unconsciously and to convert their
philosophy into a preparation for, or a confirmation of,
Christianity.[2]  --  Summing it all up, faith, the performance of
religious duties, with religious and political institutions, are at
base of all thought of the seventeenth century.  Reason, whether she
admits it or is ignorant of it, is only a subaltern, an oratorical
agency, a setter-in-motion, forced by religion and the monarchy to
labor in their behalf.  With the exception of La Fontaine, whom I
regard as unique in this as in other matters, the greatest and most
independent, Pascal, Descartes, Bossuet, La Bruyère, borrows from the
established society their basic concepts of nature, man, society, law
and government.[3] So long as Reason is limited to this function its
work is that of a councilor of State, an extra preacher dispatched by
its superiors on a missionary tour in the departments of philosophy
and of literature.  Far from proving destructive it consolidates; in
fact, even down to the Regency, its chief employment is to produce
good Christians and loyal subjects.

But now the roles are reversed; tradition descends from the upper
to the lower ranks, while Reason ascends from the latter to the
former.  --  On the one hand religion and monarchy, through their
excesses and misdeeds under Louis XIV, and their laxity and
incompetence under Louis XV, demolish piece by piece the basis of
hereditary reverence and filial obedience so long serving them as a
foundation, and which maintained them aloft above all dispute and free
of investigation; hence the authority of tradition insensibly declines
and disappears.  On the other hand science, through its imposing and
multiplied discoveries, erects piece by piece a basis of universal
trust and deference, raising itself up from an interesting subject of
curiosity to the rank of a public power; hence the authority of Reason
augments and occupies its place.  --  A time comes when, the latter
authority having dispossessed the former, the fundamental ideas
tradition had reserved to itself fall into the grasp of Reason.
Investigation penetrates into the forbidden sanctuary.  Instead of
deference there is verification, and religion, the state, the law,
custom, all the organs, in short, of moral and practical life, become
subject to analysis, to be preserved, restored or replaced, according
to the prescriptions of the new doctrine.

II.  ANCESTRAL TRADITION AND CULTURE.

Origin, nature and value of hereditary prejudice.  - How far custom,
religion and government are legitimate.

  Nothing could be better had the new doctrine been complete, and
if Reason, instructed by history, had become critical, and therefore
qualified to comprehend the rival she replaced.  For then, instead of
regarding her as an usurper to be repelled she would have recognized
in her an elder sister whose part must be left to her.  Hereditary
prejudice is a sort of Reason operating unconsciously.  It has claims
as well as reason, but it is unable to present these; instead of
advancing those that are authentic it puts forth the doubtful ones.
Its archives are buried; to exhume these it is necessary to make
researches of which it is incapable; nevertheless they exist, and
history at the present day is bringing them to light.  --  Careful
investigations shows that, like science, it issues from a long
accumulation of experiences; a people, after a multitude of gropings
and efforts, has discovered that a certain way of living and thinking
is the only one adapted to its situation, the most practical and the
most salutary, the system or dogma now seeming arbitrary to us being
at first a confirmed expedient of public safety.  Frequently it is so
still; in any event, in its leading features it is indispensable; it
may be stated with certainty that, if the leading prejudices of the
community should suddenly disappear, Man, deprived of the precious
legacy transmitted to him by the wisdom of ages, would at once fall
back into a savage condition and again become what he was at first,
namely, a restless, famished, wandering, hunted brute.  There was a
time when this heritage was lacking; there are populations to day with
which it is still utterly lacking.[4] To abstain from eating human
flesh, from killing useless or burdensome aged people, from exposing,
selling or killing children one does not know what to do with, to be
the one husband of but one woman, to hold in horror incest and
unnatural practices, to be the sole and recognized owner of a distinct
field, to be mindful of the superior injunctions of modesty, humanity,
honor and conscience, all these observances, formerly unknown and
slowly established, compose the civilization of human beings.  Because
we accept them in full security they are not the less sacred, and they
become only the more sacred when, submitted to investigation and
traced through history, they are disclosed to us as the secret force
which has converted a herd of brutes into a society of men.  In
general, the older and more universal a custom, the more it is based
on profound motives, on physiological motives on those of hygiene, and
on those instituted for social protection.  At one time, as in the
separation of castes, a heroic or thoughtful stock must be preserved
by preventing the mixtures by which inferior blood introduces mental
debility and low instincts.[5] At another, as in the prohibition of
spirituous liquors, and of animal food, it is necessary to conform to
the climate prescribing a vegetable diet, or to the race-temperament
for which strong drink is pernicious.[6]At another, as in the
institution of the right of first-born to inherit title and castle, it
was important to prepare and designate beforehand the military
commander who the tribe would obey, or the civil chieftain that would
preserve the domain, superintend its cultivation, and support the
family.[7] --  If there are valid reasons for legitimizing custom
there are reasons of higher import for the consecration of religion
Consider this point, not in general and according to a vague notion,
but at the outset, at its birth, in the texts, taking for an example
one of the faiths which now rule in society, Christianity, Hinduism,
the law of Mohammed or of Buddha.  At certain critical moments in
history, a few men, emerging from their narrow and daily routine of
life, are seized by some generalized conception of the infinite
universe; the august face of nature is suddenly unveiled to them; in
their sublime emotion they seem to have detected its first cause; they
have at least detected some of its elements.  Through a fortunate
conjunction of circumstances these elements are just those which their
century, their people, a group of peoples, a fragment of humanity is
in a state to comprehend.  Their point of view is the only one at which
the graduated multitudes below them are able to accept.  For millions
of men, for hundreds of generations, only through them is any access
to divine things to be obtained.  Theirs is the unique utterance,
heroic or affecting, enthusiastic or tranquilizing; the only one which
the hearts and minds around them and after them will heed; the only
one adapted to profound cravings, to accumulated aspirations, to
hereditary faculties, to a complete intellectual and moral organism;
Yonder that of Hindostan or of the Mongolian; here that of the Semite
or the European; in our Europe that of the German, the Latin or the
Slave; in such a way that its contradictions, instead of condemning
it, justify it, its diversity producing its adaptation and its
adaptation producing benefits.  --  This is no barren formula.  A
sentiment of such grandeur, of such comprehensive and penetrating
insight, an idea by which Man, compassing the vastness and depth of
things, so greatly oversteps the ordinary limits of his mortal
condition, resembles an illumination; it is easily transformed into a
vision; it is never remote from ecstasy; it can express itself only
through symbols; it evokes divine figures.[8]Religion in its nature is
a metaphysical poem accompanied by faith.  Under this title it is
popular and efficacious; for, apart from an invisible select few, a
pure abstract idea is only an empty term, and truth, to be apparent,
must be clothed with a body.  It requires a form of worship, a legend,
and ceremonies in order to address the people, women, children, the
credulous, every one absorbed by daily cares, any understanding in
which ideas involuntarily translate themselves through imagery.  Owing
to this palpable form it is able to give its weighty support to the
conscience, to counterbalance natural egoism, to curb the mad onset of
brutal passions, to lead the will to abnegation and devotion, to tear
Man away from himself and place him wholly in the service of truth, or
of his kind, to form ascetics, martyrs, sisters of charity and
missionaries.  Thus, throughout society, religion becomes at once a
natural and precious instrumentality.  On the one hand men require it
for the contemplation of infinity and to live properly ; if it were
suddenly to be taken away from them their souls would be a mournful
void, and they would do greater injury to their neighbors.  Besides, it
would be vain to attempt to take it away from them; the hand raised
against it would encounter only its envelope; it would be repelled
after a sanguinary struggle, its germ lying too deep to be extirpated.

And when, at length, after religion and custom, we regard the
State, that is to say, the armed power possessing both physical force
and moral authority, we find for it an almost equally noble origin.  It
has, in Europe at least, from Russia to Portugal and from Norway to
the two Sicilies, in its origin and essence, a military foundation in
which heroism constitutes itself the champion of right.  Here and there
in the chaos of tribes and crumbling societies, some man has arisen
who, through his ascendancy, rallies around him a loyal band, driving
out intruders, overcoming brigands, re-establishing order, reviving
agriculture, founding a patrimony, and transmitting as property to his
descendants his office of hereditary justiciary and born general.
Through this permanent delegation a great public office is removed
from competition, fixed in one family, sequestered in safe hands;
thenceforth the nation possesses a vital center and each right obtains
a visible protector.  If the sovereign confines himself to his
traditional responsibilities, is restrained in despotic tendencies,
and avoids falling into egoism, he provides the country with the best
government of which the world has any knowledge.  Not alone is it the
most stable, capable of continuation, and the most suitable for
maintaining together a body of 20 or 30 million people, but again one
of the most noble because devotion dignifies both command and
obedience and, through the prolongation of military tradition,
fidelity and honor, from grade to grade, attaches the leader to his
duty and the soldier to his commander.  --  Such are the strikingly
valid claims of social traditions which we may, similar to an
instinct, consider as being a blind form of reason.  That which makes
it fully legitimate is that reason herself, to become efficient, is
obliged to borrow its form.  A doctrine becomes inspiring only through
a blind medium.  To become of practical use, to take upon itself the
government of souls, to be transformed into a spring of action, it
must be deposited in minds given up to systematic belief, of fixed
habits, of established tendencies, of domestic traditions and
prejudice, and that it, from the agitated heights of the intellect,
descends into and become amalgamated with the passive forces of the
will; then only does it form a part of the character and become a
social force.  At the same time, however, it ceases to be critical and
clairvoyant; it no longer tolerates doubt and contradiction, nor
admits further restrictions or nice distinctions; it is either no
longer cognizant of, or badly appreciates, its own evidences.  We of
the present day believe in infinite progress about the same as people
once believed in original sin; we still receive ready-made opinions
from above, the Academy of Sciences occupying in many respects the
place of the ancient councils.  Except with a few special savants,
belief and obedience will always be unthinking, while Reason would
wrongfully resent the leadership of prejudice in human affairs, since,
to lead, it must itself become prejudiced.


III.  REASON AT WAR WITH ILLUSION.

The classic intellect incapable of accepting this point of view.  -
-  The past and present usefulness of tradition are misunderstood.  --
Reason undertakes to set them aside.

  Unfortunately, in the eighteenth century, reason was classic; not
only the aptitude but the documents which enable it to comprehend
tradition were absent.   In the first place, there was no knowledge of
history; learning was, due to its dullness and tediousness, refused;
learned compilations, vast collections of extracts and the slow work
of criticism were held in disdain.  Voltaire made fun of the
Benedictines.  Montesquieu, to ensure the acceptance of his "Esprit des
lois," indulged in wit about laws.  Reynal, to give an impetus to his
history of commerce in the Indies, welded to it the declamation of
Diderot.  The Abbé Barthélemy covered over the realities of Greek
manners and customs with his literary varnish.  Science was expected to
be either epigrammatic or oratorical; crude or technical details would
have been objectionable to a public composed of people of the good
society; correctness of style therefore drove out or falsified those
small significant facts which give a peculiar sense and their original
relief to ancient personalities.  --  Even if writers had dared to
note them, their sense and bearing would not have been understood.  The
sympathetic imagination did not exist[9]; people were incapable of
going out of themselves, of betaking themselves to distant points of
view, of conjecturing the peculiar and violent states of the human
brain, the decisive and fruitful moment during which it gives birth to
a vigorous creation, a religion destined to rule, a state that is sure
to endure.  The imagination of Man is limited to personal experiences,
and where in their experience, could individuals in this society have
found the material which would have allowed them to imagine the
convulsions of a delivery? How could minds, as polished and as amiable
as these, fully adopt the sentiments of an apostle, of a monk, of a
barbarian or feudal founder; see these in the milieu which explains
and justifies them; picture to themselves the surrounding crowd, at
first souls in despair and haunted by mystic dreams, and next the rude
and violent intellects given up to instinct and imagery, thinking with
half-visions, their resolve consisting of irresistible impulses? A
speculative reasoning of this stamp could not imagine figures like
these.  To bring them within its rectilinear limits they require to be
reduced and made over; the Macbeth of Shakespeare becomes that of
Ducis, and the Mahomet of the Koran that of Voltaire.  Consequently, as
they failed to see souls, they misconceived institutions.  The
suspicion that truth could have been conveyed only through the medium
of legends, that justice could have been established only by force,
that religion was obliged to assume the sacerdotal form, that the
State necessarily took a military form, and that the Gothic edifice
possessed, as well as other structures, its own architecture,
proportions, balance of parts, solidity, and even beauty, never
entered their heads.  --  Furthermore, unable to comprehend the past,
they could not comprehend the present.  They knew nothing about the
mechanic, the provincial bourgeois, or even the lesser nobility; these
were seen only far away in the distance, half-effaced, and wholly
transformed through philosophic theories and sentimental haze.  "Two or
three thousand"[10] polished and cultivated individuals formed the
circle of ladies and gentlemen, the so-called honest folks, and they
never went outside of their own circle.  If they fleeting had a glimpse
of the people from their chateaux and on their journeys, it was in
passing, the same as of their post-horses, or of the cattle on their
farms, showing compassion undoubtedly, but never divining their
anxious thoughts and their obscure instincts.  The structure of the
still primitive mind of the people was never imagined, the paucity and
tenacity of their ideas, the narrowness of their mechanical, routine
existence, devoted to manual labor, absorbed with the anxieties for
daily bread, confined to the bounds of a visible horizon; their
attachment to the local saint, to rites, to the priest, their deep-
seated rancor, their inveterate distrust, their credulity growing out
of the imagination, their inability to comprehend abstract rights, the
law and public affairs, the hidden operation by which their brains
would transform political novelties into nursery fables or into ghost
stories, their contagious infatuations like those of sheep, their
blind fury like that of bulls, and all those traits of character the
Revolution was about to bring to light.  Twenty millions of men and
more had scarcely passed out of the mental condition of the middle
ages; hence, in its grand lines, the social edifice in which they
could dwell had necessarily to be mediaeval.  It had to be cleaned up,
windows put in and walls pulled down, but without disturbing the
foundations, or the main building and its general arrangement;
otherwise after demolishing it and living encamped for ten years in
the open air like savages, its inmates would have been obliged to
rebuild it on the same plan.  In uneducated minds, those having not yet
attained to reflection, faith attaches itself only to the corporeal
symbol, obedience being brought about only through physical restraint;
religion is upheld by the priest and the State by the policeman.  --
One writer only, Montesquieu, the best instructed, the most sagacious,
and the best balanced of all the spirits of the age, made these truths
apparent, because he was at once an erudite, an observer, a historian
and a jurisconsult.  He spoke, however, as an oracle, in maxims and
riddles; and every time he touched matters belonging to his country
and epoch he hopped about as if upon red hot coals.  That is why he
remained respected but isolated, his fame exercising no influence.  The
classic reason refused[11] to go so far as to make a careful study of
both the ancient and the contemporary human being.  It found it easier
and more convenient to follow its original bent, to shut its eyes on
man as he is, to fall back on its stores of current notions, to derive
from these an idea of man in general, and build in empty space.  --
Through this natural and complete state of blindness it no longer
heeds the old and living roots of contemporary institutions; no longer
seeing them makes it deny their existence.  Custom now appears as pure
prejudice; the titles of tradition are lost, and royalty seems based
on robbery.  So from now on Reason is armed and at war with its
predecessor to wrench away its control over the minds and to replace a
rule of lies with a rule of truth.


IV.  CASTING OUT THE RESIDUE OF TRUTH AND JUSTICE.

Two stages in this operation.  - Voltaire, Montesquieu, the deists
and the reformers represent the first one.  - What they destroy and
what they respect.

  In this great undertaking there are two stages.  Owing to common
sense or timidity many stop half-way.  Motivated by passion or logic
others go to the end.  --  A first campaign results in carrying the
enemy's out-works and his frontier fortresses, the philosophical army
being led by Voltaire.  To combat hereditary prejudice, other
prejudices are opposed to it whose empire is as extensive and whose
authority is not less recognized.  Montesquieu looks at France through
the eyes of a Persian, and Voltaire, on his return from England,
describes the English, an unknown species.  Confronting dogma and the
prevailing system of worship, accounts are given, either with open or
with disguised irony, of the various Christian sects, the Anglicans,
the Quakers, the Presbyterians, the Socinians, those of ancient or of
remote people, the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Muslims, and Guebers, of
the worshippers of Brahma, of the Chinese and of pure idolaters.  In
relation to established laws and customs, expositions are made, with
evident intentions, of other constitutions and other social habits, of
despotism, of limited monarchy, of a republic, here the church subject
to the state, there the church free of the state, in this country
castes, in another polygamy, and, from country to country, from
century to century, the diversity, contradiction and antagonism of
fundamental customs which, each on its own ground, are all equally
consecrated by tradition, all legitimately forming the system of
public rights.  From now on the charm is broken.  Ancient institutions
lose their divine prestige; they are simply human works, the fruits of
the place and of the moment, and born out of convenience and a
covenant.  Skepticism enters through all the breaches.  With regard to
Christianity it at once enters into open hostility, into a bitter and
prolonged polemical warfare; for, under the title of a state religion
this occupies the ground, censuring free thought, burning writings,
exiling, imprisoning or disturbing authors, and everywhere acting as a
natural and official adversary.  Moreover, by virtue of being an
ascetic religion, it condemns not only the free and cheerful ways
tolerated by the new philosophy but again the natural tendencies it
sanctions, and the promises of terrestrial felicity with which it
everywhere dazzles the eyes.  Thus the heart and the head both agree in
their opposition.  --  Voltaire, with texts in hand, pursues it from
one end to the other of its history, from the first biblical narration
to the latest papal bulls, with unflagging animosity and energy, as
critic, as historian, as geographer, as logician, as moralist,
questioning its sources, opposing evidences, driving ridicule like a
pick-ax into every weak spot where an outraged instinct beats against
its mystic walls, and into all doubtful places where ulterior
patchwork disfigures the primitive structure.  --  He respects,
however, the first foundation, and, in this particular, the greatest
writers of the day follow the same course.  Under positive religions
that are false there is a natural religion that is true.  This is the
simple and authentic text of which the others are altered and
amplified translations.  Remove the ulterior and divergent excesses and
the original remains; this common essence, on which all copies
harmonize, is deism.  --  The same operation is to be made on civil
and political law.  In France, where so many survive their utility,
where privileges are no longer paid for with service, where rights are
changed into abuses, how incoherent is the architecture of the old
Gothic building! How poorly adapted to a modern nation ! Of what use,
in an unique and compact state, are those feudal compartments
separating orders, corporations and provinces? What a living paradox
is the archbishop of a semi-province, a chapter owning 12,000 serfs, a
drawing room abbé well supported by a monastery he never saw, a lord
liberally pensioned to figure in antechambers, a magistrate purchasing
the right to administer justice, a colonel leaving college to take the
command of his inherited regiment, a Parisian trader who, renting a
house for one year in Franche-Comté, alienates through this act alone
the ownership of his property and of his person.  Throughout Europe
there are others of the same character.  The best that can be said of
"a civilized nation" [12] is that its laws, customs and practices are
composed "one-half of abuses and one-half of tolerable usage".  --
But, underneath these concrete laws, which contradict each other, and
of which each contradicts itself, a natural law exists, implied in the
codes, applied socially, and written in all hearts.

 "Show me a country where it is honest to steal the fruits of my
labor, to violate engagements, to lie for injurious purposes, to
calumniate, to assassinate, to poison, to be ungrateful to one's
benefactor, to strike one's father and mother on offering you food".  -
"Justice and injustice is the same throughout the universe,"

and, as in the worst community force always, in some respects, is
at the service of right, so, in the worst religion, the extravagant
dogma always in some fashion proclaims a supreme architect.  --
Religions and communities, accordingly, disintegrated under the
investigating process, disclose at the bottom of the crucible, some
residue of truth, others a residue of justice, a small but precious
balance, a sort of gold ingot of preserved tradition, purified by
Reason, and which little by little, freed from its alloys, elaborated
and devoted to all usage, must solely provide the substance of
religion and all threads of the social warp.


V.  THE DREAM OF A RETURN TO NATURE.

The second stage, a return to nature.  - Diderot, d'Holbach and the
materialists.  - Theory of animated matter and spontaneous
organization.  - The moral of animal instinct and self-interest
properly understood.

  Here begins the second philosophic expedition.  It consists of two
armies: the first composed of the encyclopedists, some of them
skeptics like d'Alembert, others pantheists like Diderot and Lamarck,
the second open atheists and materialists like d'Holbach, Lamettrie
and Helvétius, and later Condorcet, Lalande and Volney, all different
and independent of each other, but unanimous in regarding tradition as
the common enemy.  As a result of prolonged hostilities the parties
become increasingly exasperated and feel a desire to be master of
everything, to push the adversary to the wall, to drive him out of all
his positions.  They refuse to admit that Reason and tradition can
occupy and defend the same citadel together; as soon as one enters the
other must depart; henceforth one prejudice is established against
another prejudice.  --  In fact, Voltaire, "the patriarch, does not
desire to abandon his redeeming and avenging God;"[13] let us tolerate
in him this remnant of superstition on account of his great services;
let us nevertheless examine this phantom in man which he regards with
infantile vision.  We admit it into our minds through faith, and faith
is always suspicious.  It is forged by ignorance, fear, and
imagination, which are all deceptive powers.  At first it was simply
the fetish of savages; in vain have we striven to purify and
aggrandize it; its origin is always apparent; its history is that of a
hereditary dream which, arising in a rude and doting brain, prolongs
itself from generation to generation, and still lasts in the healthy
and cultivated brain.  Voltaire wanted that this dream should be true
because, otherwise, he could not explain the admirable order of the
world.  Since a watch suggests a watchmaker he had firstly to prove
that the world is a watch and, then see if the half-finished
arrangement, such as it is and which we have observed, could not
better be explained by a simpler theory, more in conformity with
experience, that of eternal matter in which motion is eternal.  Mobile
and active particles, of which the different kinds are in different
states of equilibrium, these are minerals, inorganic substances,
marble, lime, air, water and coal.[14] I form humus out of this, "I
sow peas, beans and cabbages;" plants find their nourishment in the
humus, and "I find my nourishment in the plants." At every meal,
within me, and through me, inanimate matter becomes animate; "I
convert it into flesh.  I animalize it.  I render it sensitive." It
harbors latent, imperfect sensibility rendered perfect and made
manifest.  Organization is the cause, and life and sensation are the
effects; I need no spiritual monad to account for effects since I am
in possession of the cause.  "Look at this egg, with which all schools
of theology and all the temples of the earth can be overthrown.  What
is this egg? An inanimate mass previous to the introduction of  the
germ.  And what is it after the introduction of the germ? An insensible
mass, an inert fluid." Add heat to it, keep it in an oven, and let the
operation continue of itself, and we have a chicken, that is to say,
"sensibility, life, memory, conscience, passions and thought." That
which you call soul is the nervous center in which all sensitive
chords concentrate.  Their vibrations produce sensations; a quickened
or reviving sensation is memory; our ideas are the result of
sensations, memory and signs.  Matter, accordingly, is not the work of
an intelligence, but matter, through its own arrangement, produces
intelligence.  Let us fix intelligence where it is, in the organized
body; we must not detach it from its support to perch it in the sky on
an imaginary throne.  This disproportionate conception, once introduced
into our minds, ends in perverting the natural play of our sentiments,
and, like a monstrous parasite, abstracts for itself all our
substance.[15] The first interest of a sane person is to get rid of
it, to discard every superstition, every "fear of invisible
powers."[16]  --  Then only can he establish a moral order of things
and distinguish "the natural law." The sky consisting of empty space,
we have no need to seek commands from on high.  Let us look down to the
ground; let us consider man in himself, as he appears in the eyes of
the naturalist, namely, an organized body, a sensitive animal
possessing wants, appetites and instincts.  Not only are these
indestructible but they are legitimate.  Let us throw open the prison
in which prejudice confines them; let us give them free air and space;
let them be displayed in all their strength and all will go well.
According to Diderot,[17] a lasting marriage is an abuse, being "the
tyranny of a man who has converted the possession of a woman into
property." Purity is an invention and conventional, like a dress;[18]
happiness and morals go together only in countries where instinct is
sanctioned; as in Tahiti, for instance, where marriage lasts but a
month, often only a day, and sometimes a quarter of an hour, where, in
the evening and with hospitable intent, a host offers his daughters
and wife to his guests, where the son espouses his mother out of
politeness, where the union of the sexes is a religious festivity
celebrated in public.  --  And, pushing things to extremes, the
logician ends with five or six pages calculated "to make one's hair
stand on end,"[19] himself avowing that his doctrine is "neither
suited for children nor for adults." --With Diderot, to say the least,
these paradoxes have their correctives.  In his pictures of modern ways
and habits, he is the moralist.  He not only is familiar with all the
chords of the human keyboard, but he classifies each according to its
rank.  He loves fine and pure tones, and is full of enthusiasm for
noble harmonies; his heart is equal to his genius.[20] And better
still, on the question of primitive impulses arising, he assigns, side
by side with vanity, an independent and superior position to pity,
friendship, kindness and charity; to every generous affection of the
heart displaying sacrifice and devotion without calculation or
personal benefit.  --   But associated with him are others, cold and
narrow, who form moral systems according to the mathematical methods
of the ideologists, [21] after the style of Hobbes.  One motive alone
satisfies these, the simplest and most palpable, utterly gross, almost
mechanical, completely physiological, the natural animal tendency of
avoiding pain and seeking pleasure:

 "Pain and pleasure," says Helvétius, "form the only springs of the
moral universe, while the sentiment of vanity is the only basis on
which we can lay the foundations of moral usefulness.  What motive but
that of self-interest could lead a man to perform a generous action?
He can as little love good for the sake of good as evil for the sake
of evil."[22]  "The principles of natural law, say the disciples, are
reduced to one unique and fundamental principle, self-
preservation."[23] "To preserve oneself, to be happy," is instinct,
right and duty.  "Oh, yea,"[24] says nature, "who, through the
impulsion I bestow on you, tending towards happiness at every moment
of your being, resist not my sovereign law, strive for your own
felicity, enjoy fearlessly and be happy!" But to be happy, contribute
to the happiness of others; if you wish them to be useful to you, be
useful to them.  "every man, from birth to death, has need of mankind."
"Live then for them, that they may live for you."  "Be good, because
goodness links hearts together; be gentle, because gentleness wins
affection; be modest, because pride repels beings full of their self-
importance.  .  .  .  Be citizens, because your country is necessary to
ensure your safety and well-being.  Defend your country, because it
renders you happy and contains your possessions."

Virtue thus is simply egotism furnished with a telescope; man has
no other reason for doing good but the fear of doing himself harm,
while self-devotion consists of self-interest.

One goes fast and far on this road.  When the sole law for each
person is to be happy, each wishes to be so immediately and in his own
way; the herd of appetites is let loose, rushing ahead and breaking
down all barriers.  And the more readily because it has been
demonstrated to them that every barrier is an evil, invented by
cunning and malicious shepherds, the better to milk and shear them:

"The state of society is a state of warfare of the sovereign
against all, and of each member against the rest.[25] .  .  We see on
the face of the globe only incapable, unjust sovereigns, enervated by
luxury, corrupted by flattery, depraved through unpunished license,
and without talent, morals, or good qualities.  .  .  .  Man is wicked not
because he is wicked, but because he has been made so."-"Would you
know the story, in brief, of almost all our wretchedness? Here it is.
There existed the natural man, and into this man was introduced an
artificial man, whereupon a civil war arose within him, lasting
through life.  [26] .  .  If you propose to become a tyrant over him, .  .
.  do your best to poison him with a theory of morals against nature;
impose every kind of fetter on him; embarrass his movements with a
thousand obstacles; place phantoms around him to frighten him.  .  .  .
Would you see him happy and free? Do not meddle with his affairs .  .  .
Remain convinced of this, (wrote Diderot) that these wise legislators
have formed and shaped you as they have done, not for your benefit,
but for their own.  I appeal to every civil, religious, and political
institution; examine these closely, and, if I am not mistaken, you
will find the human species, century after century, subject to a yoke
which a mere handful of knaves chose to impose on it....  Be wary of
him who seeks to establish order; to order is to obtain the mastery of
others by giving them trouble."

There nothing any more to be ashamed of; the passions are good, and
if the herd would eat freely, its first care must be to trample under
its wooden shoes the mitered and crowned animals who keep it in the
fold for their own advantage.[27]



VI.  THE ABOLITION OF SOCIETY.  ROUSSEAU.

Rousseau and the spiritualists.  - The original goodness of man.  -
The mistake committed by civilization.  - The injustice of property
and of society.

A return to nature, meaning by this the abolition of society, is
the war-cry of the whole encyclopedic battalion.  The same shout is
heard in another quarter, coming the battalion of Rousseau and the
socialists who, in their turn, march up to the assault of the
established régime.  The mining and the sapping of the walls practiced
by the latter seems less extensive, but are nevertheless more
effective, and the destructive machinery it employs consists of a new
conception of human nature.  This Rousseau has drawn exclusively from
the spectacle in his own heart: [28] Rousseau, a strange, original and
superior man, who, from his infancy, harbored within him a germ of
insanity, and who finally became wholly insane; a wonderful, ill-
balanced mind in which sensations, emotions and images are too
powerful: at once blind and perspicacious, a veritable poet and a
morbid poet, who, instead of things and events beheld reveries, living
in a romance and dying in a nightmare of his own creation; incapable
of controlling and of behaving himself, confounding resolution with
action, vague desire with resolution, and the role he assumed with the
character he thought he possessed ; wholly disproportionate to the
ordinary ways of society, hitting, wounding and soiling himself
against every hindrance on his way; at times extravagant, mean and
criminal, yet preserving up to the end a delicate and profound
sensibility, a humanity, pity, the gift of tears, the faculty of
living, the passion for justice, the sentiment of religion and of
enthusiasm, like so many vigorous roots in which generous sap is
always fermenting, whilst the stem and the branches prove abortive and
become deformed or wither under the inclemency of the atmosphere.  How
explain such a contrast? How did Rousseau himself account for it? A
critic, a psychologist would merely regard him as a singular case, the
effect of an extraordinarily discordant mental formation, analogous to
that of Hamlet, Chatterton, René or Werther, adopted to poetic
spheres, but unsuitable for real life.  Rousseau generalizes; occupied
with himself, even to infatuation, and, seeing only himself, he
imagines mankind to be like himself, and "describes it as the feels it
inside himself".  His pride, moreover, finds this profitable; he is
gratified at considering himself the prototype of humanity ; the
statue he erects of himself becomes more important; he rises in his
own estimation when, in confessing to himself, he thinks he is
confessing the human species.  Rousseau convokes the assembly of
generations with the trumpet of the day of judgment, and boldly stands
up in the eyes of all men and of the Supreme Judge, exclaiming, "Let
anyone say, if he dares: 'I was a better man than Thou!' "[29] All his
blemishes must be the fault of society; his vices and his baseness
must be attributed to circumstances:

"If I had fallen into the hands of a better master....I should have
been a good Christian, a good father, a good friend, a good workman, a
good man in all things."

The wrong is thus all on the side of society.  --  In the same way,
with Man in general, his nature is good.

 "His first impulses are always right.....  The fundamental
principle of all moral questions which I have argued in all my
writings, is that Man is naturally good, and loving justice and
order.....  'Emile,' especially, is a treatise on the natural goodness
of Man, intended to show how vice and error, foreign to his
constitution, gradually find their way into it from without and
insensibly change him.....Nature created Man happy and good, while
society has depraved him and made him miserable."[30]

Imagine him divested of his factitious habits, of his superadded
necessities, of his false prejudices; put aside systems, study your
own heart, listen to the inward dictates of feeling, let yourself be
guided by the light of instinct and of conscience, and you will again
find the first Adam, like an incorruptible marble statue that has
fallen into a marsh, a long time lost under a crust of slime and mud,
but which, released from its foul covering, may be replaced on its
pedestal in the completeness of its form and in the perfect purity of
its whiteness.

Around this central idea a reform occurs in the spiritualistic
doctrine.  --   A being so noble cannot possibly consist of a simple
collection of organs; he is something more than mere matter; the
impression he derives from his senses do not constitute his full
being.

"I am not merely a sensitive and passive being, but an active and
intelligent being, and, whatever philosophy may say, I dare claim the
honor of thinking."

And better still, this thinking principle, in Man, at least, is of
a superior kind.

 "Show me another animal on the globe capable of producing fire and
of admiring the sun.  What? I who am able to observe, to comprehend
beings and their associations; who can appreciate order, beauty and
virtue; who can contemplate the universe and exalt myself to the hand
which controls it; who can love the good and do good, should I compare
myself to brutes!" Man is free, capable of deciding between two
actions, and therefore the creator of his actions ; he is accordingly
a first and original cause, "an immaterial substance," distinct from
the body, a soul hampered by the body and which may survive the body.
--   This immortal soul imprisoned within the flesh has conscience for
its organ.  "O Conscience, divine instinct, immortal and celestial
voice, unfailing guide of an ignorant and finite but free and
intelligent being, infallible judge between good and evil, and
rendering Man similar to God, Thou foremost the superiority of his
nature!"

 Alongside of vanity, by which we subordinate everything to
ourselves, there is a love of order by which we subordinate ourselves
to the whole.  Alongside of egoism, by which Man seeks happiness even
at the expense of others, is sympathy, by which he seeks the happiness
of others even at the expense of his own.  Personal enjoyment does not
suffice him; he still needs tranquillity of conscience and the
effusions of the heart.  --  Such is Man as God designed and created
him; in his organization there is no defect.  Inferior elements are as
serviceable as the superior elements; all are essential,
proportionate, in proper place, not only the heart, the conscience,
the intellect, and the faculties by which we surpass brutes, but again
the inclinations in common with animals, the instinct of self-
preservation and of self-defense, the need of physical activity,
sexual appetite, and other primitive impulses as we observe them in
the child, the savage and the uncultivated Man.[31] None of these in
themselves are either vicious or injurious.  None are too strong, even
the love of self.  None come into play out of season.  If we would not
interfere with them, if we would impose no constraint on them, if we
would permit these sparkling fountains to flow according to their
bent, if we would not confine them to our artificial and foul
channels, we should never see them boiling over and becoming turbid.
We look with wonder on their ravages and on their stains; we forget
that, in the beginning, they were pure and undefiled.  The fault is
with us, in our social arrangements, in our encrusted and formal
channels whereby we cause deviations and windings, and make them heave
and bound.  "Your very governments are the cause of the evils which
they pretend to remedy.  Ye scepters of iron! ye absurd laws, ye we
reproach for our inability to fulfill our duties on earth!" Away with
these dikes, the work of tyranny and routine! An emancipated nature
will at once resume a direct and healthy course and man, without
effort, will find himself not only happy but virtuous as well.[32] On
this principle the attack begins: there is none that is pushed
further, nor conducted with more bitter hostility.  Thus far existing
institutions are described simply as oppressive and unreasonable; but
now they are now they are accused of being unjust and corrupting as
well.  Reason and the natural desires were the only insurgents;
conscience and pride are now in rebellion.  With Voltaire and
Montesquieu all I might hope for is that fewer evils might be
anticipated.  With Diderot and d'Holbach the horizon discloses only a
glowing El Dorado or a comfortable Cythera.  With Rousseau I behold
within reach an Eden where I shall immediately recover a nobility
inseparable from my happiness.  It is my right; nature and Providence
summon me to it; it is my heritage.  One arbitrary institution alone
keeps me away from it, the creator of my vices as of my misery.  With
what rage and fury I will overthrow this ancient barrier!  --  We
detect this in the vehement tone, in the embittered style, and in the
sombre eloquence of the new doctrine.  Fun and games are no longer in
vogue, a serious tone is maintained; people become exasperated, while
the powerful voice now heard penetrates beyond the drawing-room, to
the rude and suffering crowd to which no word had yet been spoken,
whose mute resentment for the first time finds an interpreter, and
whose destructive instincts are soon to be set in motion at the
summons of its herald.  --  Rousseau is a man of the people, and not a
man of high society.  He feels awkward in a drawing-room.[33] He is not
capable of conversing and of appearing amiable; the nice expressions
only come into his head too late, on the staircase as he leaves the
house; he keeps silent with a sulky air or utters stupidities,
redeeming his awkwardness with the sallies of a clown or with the
phrases of a vulgar pedant.  Elegance annoys him, luxury makes him
uncomfortable, politeness is a lie, conversation mere prattle, ease of
manner a grimace, gaiety a convention, wit a parade, science so much
charlatanry, philosophy an affection and morals utter corruption.  All
is factitious, false and unwholesome,[34] from the make-up, toilet and
beauty of women to the atmosphere of the apartments and the ragouts on
the dinner-table, in sentiment as in amusement, in literature as in
music, in government as in religion.  This civilization, which boasts
of its splendor, is simply the restlessness of over-excited, servile
monkeys each imitating the other, and each corrupting the other to,
through sophistication, end up in worry and boredom.  Human culture,
accordingly, is in itself bad, while the fruit it produces is merely
excrescence or poison.  --  Of what use are the sciences? Uncertain
and useless, they afford merely a pasture-ground for idlers and
wranglers.[35]

" Who would want to pass a lifetime in sterile observation, if
they, apart from their duties and nature's demands, had had to bestow
their time on their country, on the unfortunate and on their friends!"
--  Of what use are the fine arts? They serve only as public flattery
of dominant passions.  "The more pleasing and the more perfect the
drama, the more baneful its influence;"  the theater, even with
Molière, is a school of bad morals, "inasmuch as it excites deceitful
souls to ridicule, in the name of comedy, the candor of artless
people." Tragedy, said to be moralizing, wastes in counterfeit
effusions the little virtue that still remains.  " When a man has been
admiring the noble feats in the fables what more is expected of him?
After paying homage to virtue is he not discharged from all that he
owes to it? What more would they have him do? Must he practice it
himself? He has no part to play, he is not a comedian."  --  The
sciences, the fine arts, the arts of luxury, philosophy, literature,
all this serve only to effeminate and distract the mind; all that is
only made for the small crowd of brilliant and noisy insects buzzing
around the summits of society and sucking away all public substance.
--  As regards the sciences, but one is important, that of our duties,
and, without so many subtleties and so much study, our innermost
conscience suffice to show us the way.  --  As regards the arts and
the skills, only those should be tolerated which, ministering to our
prime necessities, provide us with bread to feed us, with a roof to
shelter us, clothing to cover us, and arms with which to defend
ourselves.  --  In the way of existence that only is healthy which
enables us to live in the country, artlessly, without display, in
family union, devoted to cultivation, living on the products of the
soil and among neighbors that are equals and with servants that one
trusts as friends.[36]  --  As for the classes, but one is
respectable, that of laboring men, especially that of men working with
their own hands, artisans and mechanics, only these being really of
service, the only ones who, through their situation, are in close
proximity to the natural state, and who preserve, under a rough
exterior, the warmth, the goodness and the integrity of primitive
instincts.  --  Accordingly, let us call by its true name this
elegance, this luxury, this urbanity, this literary delicacy, this
philosophical eccentricity, admired by the prejudiced as the flower of
the life of humanity; it is only mold and mildew.  In like manner
esteem at its just value the swarm that live upon it, namely, the
indolent aristocracy, the fashionable world, the privileged who direct
and make a display, the idlers of the drawing room who talk, divert
themselves and regard themselves as the elect of humanity, but who are
simply so many parasites.  Whether parasitic or excretory, one attracts
the other, and the tree can only be well if we get rid of both.

If civilization is bad, society is worse.  [37] For this could not
have been established except by destroying primitive equality, while
its two principal institutions, property and government, are
encroachments.

"He who first enclosed a plot of ground, and who took it into his
to say this belongs to me, and who found people simple enough to
believe him,[38] was the true founder of civil society.  What crimes,
what wars, what murders, what misery and what horrors would have been
spared the human race if he who, pulling up the landmark and filling
up the ditch, had cried out to his fellows: Be wary of that impostor;
you are lost if you forget that no one has a right to the land and
that its fruits are the property of all !"  --  The first ownership
was a robbery by which an individual abstracted from the community a
portion of the public domain.  Nothing could justify the outrage,
nothing added by him to the soil, neither his industry, nor his
trouble, nor his valor.  "In vain may he assert that he built this
wall, and acquired this land by his labor.  Who marked it out for him,
one might ask, and how do you come to be paid for labor which was
never imposed on you? Are you not aware that a multitude of your
brethren are suffering and perishing with want because you have too
much, and that the express and unanimous consent of the whole human
species is requisite before appropriating to yourself more than your
share of the common subsistence?"  --

Underneath this theory we recognize the personal attitude, the
grudge of the poor embittered commoner, who, on entering society,
finds the places all taken, and who is incapable of creating one for
himself; who, in his confessions, marks the day when he ceased to feel
hungry; who, for lack of something better, lives in concubinage with a
serving-woman and places his five children in an orphanage; who is in
turn servant, clerk, vagabond, teacher and copyist, always on the
look-out, using his wits to maintain his independence, disgusted with
the contrast between what he is outwardly and what he feels himself
inwardly, avoiding envy only by disparagement, and preserving in the
folds of his heart an old grudge "against the rich and the fortunate
in this world as if they were so at his expense, as if their assumed
happiness had been an infringement on his happiness." [39]  --  Not
only is there injustice in the origin of property but again there is
injustice in the power it secures to itself, the wrong increasing like
a canker under the partiality of law.

"Are not all the advantages of society for the rich and for the
powerful?[40] Do they not absorb to themselves all lucrative
positions? Is not the public authority wholly in their interest? If a
man of position robs his creditors or commits other offenses is he not
certain of impunity? Are not the blows he bestows, his violent
assaults, the murders and the assassinations he is guilty of, matters
that are hushed up and forgotten in a few months?  --  Let this same
man be robbed and the entire police set to work, and woe to the poor
innocents they suspect!  --  Has he to pass a dangerous place, escorts
overrun the country.-If the axle of his coach breaks down everybody
runs to help him.   --   Is a noise made at his gate, a word from him
and all is silent.  --  Does the crowd annoy him, he makes a sign and
order reigns.  --  Does a carter chance to cross his path, his
attendants are ready to knock him down, while fifty honest pedestrians
might be crushed rather than delaying a rascal in his carriage.  --
All these considerations do not cost him a penny.; they are a rich
man's entitlements and not the price for being rich.  --  What a
different picture of the poor ! The more humanity owes them the more
it refuses them.  All doors are closed to them even when they have the
right to have them opened, and if they sometimes obtain justice they
have more trouble than others in obtaining favors.  If there is statute
labor to be carried out, a militia to raise, the poor are the most
eligible.  It always bears burdens from which its wealthier neighbor
with influence secures exemption.  At the least accident to a poor man
everybody abandons him.  Let his cart topple over and I regard him as
fortunate if he escapes the insults of the smart companions of a young
duke passing by.  In a word all assistance free of charge is withheld
from him in time of need, precisely because he cannot pay for it.  I
regard him as a lost man if he is so unfortunate as to be honest and
have a pretty daughter and a powerful neighbor.  --  Let us sum up in
a few words the social pact of the two estates:

You need me because I am rich and you are poor: let us then make an
agreement together.  I will allow you the honor of serving me on
condition that you give me the little that remains to you for the
trouble I have in governing you."

This shows the spirit, the aim and the effect of political society.
--   At the start, according to Rousseau, it consisted of an unfair
bargain, made by an adroit rich man with a poor dupe, "providing new
fetters for the weak and fresh power for the rich," and, under the
title of legitimate property, consecrating the usurpation of the soil.
--   To day the contract is still more unjust " by means of which a
child may govern an old man, a fool lead the wise, and a handful of
people live in abundance whilst a famished multitude lack the
necessities for life." It is the nature of inequality to grow; hence
the authority of some increases along with the dependence of the rest,
so that the two conditions, having at last reached their extremes, the
hereditary and perpetual objection of the people seems to be a divine
right equally with the hereditary and perpetual despotism of the king.
--  This is the present situation and, any change, will be for the
worse.  "For,[41] the occupation of all kings, or of those charged with
their functions, consists wholly of two objects, to extend their sway
abroad and to render it more absolute at home." When they plead some
other cause it is only a pretext.  "The terms public good, happiness of
subjects, the glory of the nation, so heavily employed in government
announcements, never denote other than disastrous commands, and the
people shudder beforehand when its masters allude to their paternal
solicitude."  --   However, this fatal point once reached, "the
contract with the government is dissolved; the despot is master only
while remaining the most powerful, and, as soon as he can be expelled,
it is useless for him to cry out against violence."  Because right can
only exist through consent, and no consent nor right can exist between
master and slave.

Whether between one man and another man, or between one man and a
people, the following is an absurd address: ' I make an agreement with
you wholly at your expense and to my advantage which I shall respect
as long as I please and which you shall respect as long as it pleases
me.' "  --

Only madmen may sign such a treaty, but, as madmen, they are not in
a condition to negotiate and their signature is not binding.  Only the
vanquished on the ground, with swords pointed at their throats, may
accept such conditions but, being under constraint, their promise is
null and void.  Madmen and the conquered may for a thousand years have
bound over all subsequent generations, but a contract for a minor is
not a contract for an adult, and on the child arriving at the age of
Reason he belongs to himself.  We at last have become adults, and we
have only to make use of our rights to reduce the pretensions of this
self-styled authority to their just value.  It has power on its side
and nothing more.  But "a pistol in the hand of a brigand is also
power," but do you think that I should be morally obliged to give him
my purse?  --  I obey only compelled by force and I will have my purse
back as soon as I can take his pistol away from him.


VII: THE LOST CHILDREN.

The lost children of the philosophic party.  - Naigeon, Sylvain
Maréchal, Mably, Morelly.  - The entire discredit of traditions and
institutions derived from it.

We stop here.  It is pointless to follow the lost children of the
party, Naigeon and Sylvain Maréchal, Mably and Morelly, the fanatics
that set atheism up as an obligatory dogma and a superior duty; the
socialists who, to suppress egoism, propose a community of property,
and who found a republic in which any man that proposes to re-
establish "detestable ownership" shall be declared an enemy of
humanity, treated as a "raging maniac" and shut up in a dungeon for
life.  It is sufficient to have studied the operations of large armies
and of great campaigns.   --   With different gadgets and opposite
tactics, the various attacks have all had the same results, all the
institutions have been undermined from below.  The governing ideology
has withdrawn all authority from custom, from religion, from the
State.  Not only is it assumed that tradition in itself is false, but
again that it is harmful through its works, that it builds up
injustice on error, and that by rendering man blind it leads him to
oppress.  Henceforth it is outlawed.  Let this "loathsome thing" with
its supporters be crushed out.  It is the great evil of the human
species, and, when suppressed, only goodness will remain.

"The time will then come[42] when the sun will shine only on free
men recognizing no other master than Reason; when tyrants and slaves,
and priests with their senseless or hypocritical instruments will
exist only in history and on the stage; when attention will no longer
be bestowed on them except to pity their victims and their dupes,
keeping oneself vigilant and useful through horror of their excesses,
and able to recognize and extinguish by the force of Reason the first
germs of superstition and of tyranny, should they ever venture to
reappear."

The millennium is dawning and it is once more Reason, which should
set it up.  In this way we shall owe everything to its salutary
authority, the foundation of the new order of things as well as the
destruction of the old one.

_______________________________________________________________

NOTES :

[1] "Discours de la Methode."

[2]This is evident with Descartes in the second step he takes.  (The
theory of pure spirit, the idea of God, the proof of his existence,
the veracity of our intelligence demonstrated the veracity of God,
etc.)

[3] See Pascal, "Pensées" (on the origin of property and rank).  The
"Provinciales" (on homicide and the right to kill).  --  Nicole,
"Deuxième traité de la charité, et de l'amour-propre" (on the natural
man and the object of society).  Bossuet, "Politique tirée de
l'Ecriture sainte." La Bruyère, "Des Esprits forts."

[4] Cf.  Sir.  John Lubbock, "Origine de la Civilisation."  --
Gerand-Teulon, "Les Origines de la famille."

[5] The principle of caste in India; we see this in the contrast
between the Aryans and the aborigines, the Soudras and the Pariahs.

[6] In accordance with this principle the inhabitants of the
Sandwich Islands passed a law forbidding the sale of liquor to the
natives and allowing it to Europeans.  (De Varigny, "Quatorze ans aux
iles Sandwich.")

[7] Cf.  Le Play, "De l'Organization de la famille," (the history of
a domain in the Pyrenees.)

[8] See, especially, in Brahmin literature the great metaphysical
poems and the Puranas.

[9] Montaigne (1533-92) apparently also had 'sympathetic
imagination' when he wrote: "I am most tenderly symphathetic towards
the afflictions of others," ("On Cruelty").  (SR.)

[10] Voltaire, "Dic.  Phil." the article on Punishments.

[11] "Resumé des cahiers," by Prud'homme, preface, 1789.

[12] Voltaire, Dialogues, Entretiens entre A.  B.  C.

[13] Voltaire, "Dict.Phil.," the article on Religion.  "If there is
a hamlet to be governed it must have a religion."

[14] "Le rêve de d'Alembert," by Diderot, passim.

[15] "If a misanthrope (a hater of mankind) had proposed to himself
to injure humanity what could he have invented better than faith in an
incomprehensible being, about which men never could come to any
agreement, and to which they would attach more importance than to
their own existence?" Diderot, "Entretien d'un philosophe avec la
Maréchale de ....." (And that is just what our Marxist sociologist,
psychologists etc have done in inventing a human being bereft of those
emotions which in other animals force them to give in to their
maternal, paternal and leadership instincts thereby making them happy
in the process..  SR.)

[16] Cf.  "Catéchisme Universel," by Saint-Lambert, and the "Loi
naturelle ou Catéchisme du citoyen français," by Volney.

[17] "Supplément au voyage de Bougainville."

[18] Cf.  "Mémoires de Mm.  D'Epinay," a conversation with Duclos and
Saint-Lambert at the house of Mlle.  Quinault.  - Rousseau's
"Confessions," part I, book V.  These are the same principles taught by
M. de la Tavel to Mme.  De Warens.

[19] "Suite du rêve de d'Alembert." "Entretien entre Mlls.  de
Lespinasse et Bordeu." - "Mémoires de Diderot," a letter to Mlle.
Volant, III.  66.

[20] Cf.  his admirable tales, "Entretiens d'un père avec ses
enfants," and "Le neveu de Rameau."

[21] Volney, ibid .  "The natural law .  .  .  consists wholly of
events whose repetition may be observed through the senses and which
create a science as precise and accurate as geometry and mathematics."

[22] Helvétius, "De l'Esprit." passim.

[23] Volney, ibid.  Chap.  III.  Saint-Lambert, ibid.  The first
dialogue.

[24] D'Holbach, "Systeme de la Nature," II.  408 493.

[25] D'Holbach, "Système de la nature, " I.  347.

[26] Diderot, "Supplément au voyage de Bougainville."

[27] Diderot, "Les Eleuthéromanes."

   Et ses mains, ourdissant les entrailles du prêtre,
   En feraient un cordon pour le dernier des rois.

Brissot: "Necessity being the sole title to property the result is
that when a want is satisfied man is no longer a property owner.  .  .  .
Two prime necessities are due to the animal constitution, food and
waste.  .  .  .  May men nourish themselves on their fallen creatures?
(Yes for) all beings may justly nourish themselves on any material
calculated to supply their wants .  .  .  Man of nature, fulfill your
desire, give heed to your cravings, your sole masters and your only
guide.  Do you feel your veins throbbing with inward fires at the sight
of a charming creature? She is yours, your caresses are innocent and
your kisses pure.  Love alone entitles to enjoyment as hunger is the
warrant for property." (An essay published in 1780, and reprinted in
1782 in the "Bibliothèque du Législateur," quoted by Roux and Buchez
"Histoire parlementaire," XIII, 431.

[28] The words of Rousseau himself ("Rousseau juge de Jan-Jacques,"
third dialogue, p 193): From whence may the painter and apologist of
nature, now so disfigured and so calumniated, derive his model if not
from his own heart ?"

[29] "Confessions," Book I.  p.1, and the end of the fifth book.  --
First letter to M. de Malesherbes: "I know my great faults, and am
profoundly sensible of my vices.  Even so I shall die with the
conviction that of all the men I have encountered no one was better
than myself".  --  To Madame B---, March 16, 1770, he writes: "You
have awarded me esteem for my writings; your esteem would be yet
greater for my life if it were open to you inspection, and still
greater for my heart if it were exposed to your view.  Never was there
a better one, a heart more tender or more just....  My misfortunes are
all due to my virtues."  --  To Madame de la Tour, "Whoever is not
enthusiastic in my behalf in unworthy of me."

[30] Letter to M. de Beaumont.  p.24.  - Rousseau juge de Jean-
Jacques, troisième entretien, 193.

[31] "Emile," book I, and the letter to M. de Beaumont, passim.

[32] Article I.  "All Frenchmen shall be virtuous." Article II.  "All
Frenchmen shall be happy." Draft of a constitution found among the
papers of Sismondi, at that time in school.  (My French dictionary
writes: "SISMONDI, (Jean Charles Léonard Simonde de) Genève, 1773 -
id.  1842, Swiss historian and economist of Italian origin.  He was a
forerunner of dirigisme and had influenced Marx with his book:
"Nouveaux principes d'économie politique.1819.  SR.)

[33] "Confessions," part 2, book IX.  368.  "I cannot comprehend how
any one can converse in a circle.  .  .  .  I stammer out a few words,
with no meaning in them, as quickly as I can, very glad if they convey
no sense.  .  .  .  I should be as fond of society as anybody if I were
not certain of appearing not merely to disadvantage but wholly
different from what I really am."  --  Cf.  in the "Nouvelle Héloise,"
2nd part, the letter of Saint-Preux on Paris.  Also in "Emilie," the
end of book IV.

[34] "Confessions," part 2, IX.  361.  "I was so weary of drawing-
rooms, of jets of water, of bowers, of flower-beds and of those that
showed them to me; I was so overwhelmed with pamphlets, harpsichords,
games, knots, stupid witticisms, simpering looks, petty story-tellers
and heavy suppers, that when I spied out a corner in a hedge, a bush,
a barn, a meadow, or when, on passing through a hamlet, I caught the
smell of a good parsley omelet .  .  I sent to the devil all the rouge,
frills, flounces and perfumery, and, regretting a plain dinner and
common wine, I would gladly have closed the mouth of both the head
cook and the butler who forced me to dine when I generally sup, and to
sup when a generally go to bed, but, especially the lackeys that
envied me every morsel I ate and who, at the risk of my dying with
thirst, sold me the drugged wine of their master at ten times the
price I would have to pay for a better wine at a tavern."

[35] "Discours sur l'influence des sciences et des arts"  --  The
letter to d'Alembert on theatrical performances.

[36] Does it not read like a declaration of intent for forming a
Kibbutz? (SR.)

[37] "The high society (La societé) is as natural to the human
species as decrepitude to the individual.  The people require arts,
laws, and governments, as old men require crutches." See the letter M.
Philopolis, p.  248.

[38] See the discourse on the "Origine de l'Inégalite," passim.

[39] "Emile," book IV.  Rousseau's narrative.  P.  13.

[40] "Discours sur l'économie politique," 326.

[41] "Discours sur l'Origine de l'Inégalité," 178, "Contrat
Social," I.  ch.  IV.

[42] Condorcet, "Tableau des progrès de l'esprit humain," the tenth
epoch.





CHAPTER IV.  ORGANIZING THE FUTURE SOCIETY.

I.   LIBERTY, EQUALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE.

The mathematical method.  - Definition of man in the abstract.  - The
social contract.  - Independence and equality of the contractors.  - All
equal before the law and each sharing in the sovereignty.

  Consider future society as it appears at this moment to our
legislators in their study, and bear in mind that it will soon appear
under the same aspect to the legislators of the Assembly.  -  In their
eyes the decisive moment has come.  Henceforth two histories are to
exist;[1] one, that of the past, the other, that of the future,
formerly a history of Man still deprived of his reason, and at present
the history of the rational human being.  The rule of right is at last
to begin.  Of all that the past generations have founded and
transmitted nothing is legitimate.  Overlaying the natural Man they
created an artificial Man, either ecclesiastic or laic, noble or
commoner, sovereign or subject, proprietor or proletary, ignorant or
cultivated, peasant or citizen, slave or master, all being phony
qualities which we are not to heed, as their origin is tainted with
violence and robbery.  Strip off these superfluous garments; let us
take Man in himself, the same under all conditions, in all situations,
in all countries, in all ages, and strive to ascertain what sort of
association is the best adapted to him.  The problem thus stated, the
rest follows.  - In accordance with the customs of the classic
mentality, and with the precepts of the prevailing ideology, a
political system is now constructed after a mathematical model.[2] A
simple statement is selected, and set apart, very general, familiar,
readily apparent, and easily understood by the most ignorant and
inattentive schoolboy.  Reject every difference, which separates one
man from other men; retain of him only the portion common to him and
to others.  The remainder constitutes Man in general, or in other
words,

 "a sensitive and rational being who, thus endowed, avoids pain and
seeks pleasure," and therefore aspiring to happiness, namely, a stable
condition in which one enjoys greater pleasure than pain,"[3] or,
again, "a sensitive being capable of forming rational opinions and of
acquiring moral ideas."[4]

Anyone (they say)may by himself experience this elementary idea,
and can verify it at the first glance.  Such is the social unit; let
several of these be combined, a thousand, a hundred thousand, a
million, twenty-six millions, and you have the French people.  Men born
at twenty-one years of age, without relations, without a past, without
traditions, without a country, are supposed to be assembled for the
first time and, for the first time, to treat with each other.  In this
position, at the moment of contracting together, all are equal: for,
as the definition states, the extrinsic and spurious qualities through
which alone all differ have been rejected.  All are free; for,
according to the definition, the unjust thralldom imposed on all by
brute force and by hereditary prejudice has been suppressed.  -  But if
all men are equal, no reason exists why, in this contract, any special
advantage should be conceded to one more than to another.  Accordingly
all shall be equal before the law; no person, or family, or class,
shall be allowed any privilege; no one shall claim a right of which
another might be deprived; no one shall be subject to any duty from
another is exempt.  - On the other hand, all being free, each enters
with a free will along with the group of wills constitute the new
community; it is necessary that in the common resolutions he should
fully concur.  Only on these conditions does he bind himself; he is
bound to respect laws only because he has assisted in making them, and
to obey magistrates only because he has aided in electing them.
Underneath all legitimate authority his consent or his vote must be
apparent, while, in the humblest citizen, the most exalted of public
powers must recognize a member of their own sovereignty.  No one may
alienate or lose this portion of his sovereignty; it is inseparable
from his person, and, on delegating it to another, he reserves to
himself full possession of it.  - The liberty, equality and sovereignty
of the people constitute the first articles of the social contract.
These are rigorously deduced from a primary definition; other rights
of the citizen are to be no less rigorously deduced from it, the main
features of the constitution, the most important civil and political
laws, in short, the order, the form and the spirit of the new state.

II.  NAIVE CONVICTIONS

The first result.  - The theory easily applied.  - Confidence in it
due to belief in man's inherent goodness and reasonableness.

  Hence, two consequences.-In the first place, a society thus
organized is the only just one; for, the reverse of all others, it is
not the result of a blind subjection to traditions, but of a contract
concluded among equals, examined in open  daylight, and assented to in
full freedom.[5] The social contract, composed of demonstrated
theorems, has the authority of geometry; hence an equal value at all
times, in every place, and for every people; it is accordingly
rightfully established.  Those who put an obstacle in its way are
enemies of the human race; whether a government, an aristocracy or a
clergy, they must be overthrown.  Revolt is simply just defense; in
withdrawing ourselves from their hands we only recover what is
wrongfully held and which legitimately belongs to us.  - In the second
place, this social code, as just set forth, once promulgated, is
applicable without misconception or resistance; for it is a species of
moral geometry, simpler than any other, reduced to first principles,
founded on the clearest and most popular notions, and, in four steps,
leading to capital truths.  The comprehension and application of these
truths demand no preparatory study or profound reflection; Reason is
enough, and even common sense.  Prejudice and selfishness alone might
impair the testimony; but never will testimony be wanting in a sound
brain and in an upright heart.  Explain the rights of man to a laborer
or to a peasant and at once he becomes an able politician; teach
children the citizen's catechism and, on leaving school, they
comprehend duties and rights as well as the four fundamental
principles.  - Thereupon hope spreads her wings to the fullest extent,
all obstacles seem removed.  It is admitted that, of itself, and
through its own force, the theory engenders its own application, and
that it suffices for men to decree or accept the social compact to
acquire suddenly by this act the capacity for comprehending it and the
disposition to carry it out.

What a wonderful confidence, at first inexplicable, which assume
with regard to man an idea which we no longer hold.  Man, indeed, was
regarded as essentially good and reasonable.  - Rational, that is to
say, capable of assenting to a plain obvious principle, of following
an ulterior chain of argument, of understanding and accepting the
final conclusion, of extracting for himself, on the occasion calling
for it, the varied consequences to which it leads: such is the
ordinary man in the eyes of the writers of the day; they judged him by
themselves.  To them the human intellect is their own, the classic
intellect.  For a hundred and fifty years it ruled in literature, in
philosophy, in science, in education, in conversation, by virtue of
tradition, of usage and of good taste.  No other was tolerated and no
other was imagined; and if, within this closed circle, a stranger
succeeds in introducing himself, it is on condition of adopting the
oratorical idiom which the raison raisonnante imposes on all its
guests, on Greeks, Englishmen, barbarians, peasants and savages,
however different from each other and however different they may be
amongst themselves.  In Buffon, the first man, on narrating the first
hours of his being, analyses his sensations, emotions and impulses,
with as much subtlety as Condillac himself.  With Diderot, Otou the
Tahitian, with Bernardin de St.  Pierre, a semi-savage Hindu and an old
colonist of the Ile-de-France, with Rousseau a country vicar, a
gardener and a juggler, are all accomplished conversationalists and
moralists.  In Marmontel and in Florian, in all the literature of
inferior rank preceding or accompanying the Revolution, also in the
tragic or comic drama, the chief talent of the personage, whoever he
may be, whether an uncultivated rustic, tattooed barbarian or naked
savage, consists in being able to explain himself, in arguing and in
following an abstract discourse with intelligence and attention, in
tracing for himself, or in the footsteps of a guide, the rectilinear
pathway of general ideas.  Thus, to the spectators of the eighteenth
century, Reason is everywhere and she stands alone in the world.  A
form of intellect so universal necessarily strikes them as natural,
they resemble people who, speaking but one language, and one they have
always spoken with facility, cannot imagine another language being
spoken, or that they may be surrounded by the deaf and the dumb.  And
so much the more in as much as their theory authorizes this prejudice.
According to the new ideology all minds are within reach of all
truths.  If the mind does not grasp them the fault is ours in not being
properly prepared; it will comprehend if we take the trouble to guide
it properly.  For it has senses the same as our own; and sensations,
revived, combined and noted by signs, suffice to form "not only all
our conceptions but again all our faculties."[6] An exact and constant
relationship of ideas attaches our simplest perceptions to the most
complex sciences, and, from the lowest to the highest degree, a scale
is practicable; if the scholar stops on the way it is owing to our
having left too great an interval between two degrees of the scale;
let no intermediary degrees be omitted and he will mount to the top of
it.  To this exalted idea of the faculties of man is added a no less
exalted idea of his heart.  Rousseau having declared this to be
naturally good, the refined class plunge into the belief with all the
exaggerations of fashion and all the sentimentality of the drawing-
room.  The conviction is widespread that man, and especially the man of
the people, is sensitive and affectionate by nature; that he is
immediately impressed by benefactions and disposed to be grateful for
them, that he softens at the slightest sign of interest in him, and
that he is capable of every refinement.  A series of engravings
represents two children in a dilapidated cottage,[7] one five and the
other three years old, by the side of an infirm grandmother, one
supporting her head and the other giving her drink; the father and
mother enter and, on seeing this touching incident, "these good people
find themselves so happy in possessing such children they forget they
are poor." "Oh, my father," cries a shepherd youth of the Pyrénées,[8]
"accept this faithful dog, so true to me for seven years; in future
let him follow and defend you, thus serving me better than in any
other manner." It would require too much space to follow in the
literature of the end of the century, from Marmontel to Bernardin de
Saint-Pierre, and from Florian to Berquin and Bitaubé, the
interminable repetition of these sweet insipidities.  The illusion even
reaches statesmen.  "Sire," says Turgot, on presenting the king with a
plan of political education,[9] "I venture to assert that in ten years
your nation will no longer be recognizable, and through enlightenment
and good morals, in intelligent zeal for your service and for the
country, it will rise above all other nations.  Children who are now
ten years of age will then be men prepared for the state, loving their
country, submissive to authority, not through fear but through Reason,
aiding their fellow-citizens, and accustomed to recognizing and
respecting justice." - In the months of January, 1789,[10] Necker, to
whom M. de Bouillé pointed out the imminent danger arising from the
unswerving efforts of the Third-Estate , "coldly replied, turning his
eyes upward, 'reliance must be placed on the moral virtues of man.' "
- In the main, on the imagination forming any conception of human
society, this consists of a vague, semi-bucolic, semi-theatrical
scene, somewhat resembling those displayed on the frontispieces of
illustrated works on morals and politics.  Half-naked men with others
clothed in skins, assemble together under a large oak tree; in the
center of the group a venerable old man arises and makes an address,
using "the language of nature and Reason," proposing that all should
be united, and explaining how men are bound together by mutual
obligations; he shows them the harmony of private and of public
interests, and ends by making them appreciate of the beauty of
virtue.[11] All utter shouts of joy, embrace each other, gather round
the speaker and elect him chief magistrate; dancing is going on under
the branches in the background, and henceforth happiness on earth is
fully established.  - This is no exaggeration.  The National Assembly
addresses the nation in harangues of this style.  For many years the
government speaks to the people as it would to one of Gessner's
shepherds.  The peasants are entreated not to burn castles because it
is painful for their good king to see such sights.  They are exhorted
"to surprise him with their virtues in order that he may be the sooner
rewarded for his own."[12] At the height of the Jacquerie tumults the
sages of the day seem to think they are living in a state of pastoral
simplicity, and that with an air on the flute they may restore to its
fold the howling pack of bestial animosities and unchained appetites

III.  OUR TRUE HUMAN NATURE.

The inadequacy and fragility of reason in man.  - The rarity and
inadequacy of reason in humanity.  - Subordination of reason in human
conduct.  - Brutal and dangerous forces.  - The nature and utility of
government.  Government impossible under the new theory.

  It is a sad thing to fall asleep in a sheep-shed and, on
awakening, to find the sheep transformed into wolves; and yet, in the
event of a revolution that is what we may expect.  What we call reason
in Man is not an innate endowment, basic and enduring, but a tardy
acquisition and a fragile composition.  The slightest physiological
knowledge will tell us that it is a precarious act of balance,
dependent on the no less greater instability of the brain, nerves,
circulation and digestion.  Take women that are hungry and men that
have been drinking; place a thousand of these together, and let them
excite each other with their cries, their anxieties, and the
contagious reaction of their ever-deepening emotions; it will not be
long before you find them a crowd of dangerous maniacs.  This becomes
evident, and abundantly so, after 1789.  -  Now, consult psychology.
The simplest mental operation, a sensuous perception, is an act of
memory, the appliance of a name, an ordinary act of judgment is the
play of complicated mechanism, the joint and final result of several
millions of wheels which, like those of a clock,[13] turn and propel
blindly, each for itself, each through its own force, and each kept in
place and in functional activity by a system of balance and
compensation.[14] If the hands mark the hour with any degree of
accuracy it is due to a wonderful if not miraculous conjunction, while
hallucination, delirium and monomania, ever at the door, are always
ready to enter it.  Properly speaking Man is mad, as the body is sick,
by nature; the health of our mind, like the health of our organs, is
simply a repeated achievement and a happy accident.  If such happens to
be the case with the coarse woof and canvas, with the large and
approximately strong threads of our intellect, what are the chances
for the ulterior and superadded embroidery, the subtle and complicated
netting forming reason properly so called, and which is composed of
general ideas? Formed by a slow and delicate process of weaving,
through a long system of signs, amidst the agitation of pride, of
enthusiasm and of dogmatic obstinacy, what risk, even in the most
perfect brain, for these ideas only inadequately to correspond with
outward reality! All that we require in this connection is to witness
the operation of the idyll in vogue with the philosophers and
politicians.  -  These being the superior minds, what can be said of
the masses of the people, of the uncultivated or semi-cultivated
brains? According as reason is crippled in man so is it rare in
humanity.  General ideas and accurate reasoning are found only in a
select few.  The comprehension of abstract terms and the habit of
making accurate deductions requires previous and special preparation,
a prolonged mental exercise and steady practice, and besides this,
where political matters are concerned, a degree of composure which,
affording every facility for reflection, enables a man to detach
himself for a moment from himself for the consideration of his
interests as a disinterested observer.  If one of these conditions is
wanting, reason, especially in relation to politics, is absent.  -  In
a peasant or a villager, in any man brought up from infancy to manual
labor, not only is the network of superior conceptions defective, but
again the internal machinery by which they are woven is not perfected.
Accustomed to the open air, to the exercise of his limbs, his
attention flags if he stands inactive for a quarter of an hour;
generalized expressions find their way into his mind only as sound;
the mental combination they ought to excite cannot be produced.  He
becomes drowsy unless a powerful vibrating voice contagiously arouses
in him the instincts of flesh and blood, the personal cravings, the
secret enmities which, restrained by outward discipline, are always
ready to be set free.  -   In the half-cultivated mind, even with the
man who thinks himself cultivated and who reads the newspapers,
principles are generally disproportionate guests; they are above his
comprehension; he does not measure their bearings, he does not
appreciate their limitations, he is insensible to their restrictions
and he falsifies their application.  They are like those preparations
of the laboratory which, harmless in the chemist's hands, become
destructive in the street under the feet of passing people.  - Too soon
will this be apparent when, in the name of popular sovereignty, each
commune, each mob, shall regard itself as the nation and act
accordingly; when Reason, in the hands of its new interpreters, shall
inaugurate riots in the streets and peasant insurrections in the
fields.[15]

This is owing to the philosophers of the age having been mistaken
in two ways.  Not only is reason not natural to Man nor universal in
humanity, but again, in the conduct of Man and of humanity, its
influence is small.  Except with a few cool and clear intellects, a
Fontenelle, a Hume, a Gibbon, with whom it may prevail because it
encounters no rivals, it is very far from playing a leading part; it
belongs to other forces born within us, and which, by virtue of being
the first comers, remain in possession of the field.  The place
obtained by reason is always restricted; the office it fulfills is
generally secondary.  Openly or secretly, it is only a convenient
subaltern, a domestic advocate constantly suborned, employed by the
proprietors to plead in their behalf; if they yield precedence in
public it is only through decorum.  Vainly do they proclaim it the
recognized sovereign; they grant it only a passing authority, and,
under its nominal control, they remain the inward masters.  These
masters of Man consists of physical temperament, bodily needs, animal
instinct, hereditary prejudice, imagination, generally the dominant
passion, and more particularly personal or family interest, also that
of caste or party.  We are making a big mistake were we assume men to
be naturally good, generous, pleasant, or at any rate gentle, pliable,
and ready to sacrifice themselves to social interests or to those of
others.  There are several, and among them the strongest, who, left to
themselves, would only wreak havoc.  - In the first place, if there is
no certainty of Man being a remote blood cousin of the monkey, it is
at least certain that, in his structure, he is an animal closely
related to the monkey, provided with canine teeth, carnivorous,
formerly cannibal and, therefore, a hunter and bellicose.  Hence there
is in him a steady substratum of brutality and ferocity, and of
violent and destructive instincts, to which must be added, if he is
French, gaiety, laughter, and a strange propensity to gambol and act
insanely in the havoc he makes; we shall see him at work.  -  In the
second place, at the outset, his condition casts him naked and
destitute on an ungrateful soil, on which subsistence is difficult,
where, at the risk of death, he is obliged to save and to economize.
Hence a constant preoccupation and the rooted idea of acquiring,
accumulating, and possessing, rapacity and avarice, more particularly
in the class which, tied to the globe, fasts for sixty generations in
order to support other classes, and whose crooked fingers are always
outstretched to clutch the soil whose fruits they cause to grow;-we
shall see this class at work.  - Finally, his more delicate mental
organization makes of him from the earliest days an imaginative being
in which swarming fancies develop themselves into monstrous chimeras
to expand his hopes, fears and desires beyond all bounds.  Hence an
excess of sensibility, sudden outbursts of emotion, contagious
agitation, irresistible currents of passion, epidemics of credulity
and suspicion, in short, enthusiasm and panic, especially if he is
French, that is to say, excitable and communicative, easily thrown off
his balance and prompt to accept foreign impulsion, deprived of the
natural ballast which a phlegmatic temperament and concentration of
lonely meditations secure to his German and Latin neighbors; and all
this we shall see at work.  -  These constitute some of the brute
forces that control human life.  In ordinary times we pay no attention
to them; being subordinated they do not seem to us formidable.  We take
it for granted that they are allayed and pacified ; we flatter
ourselves that the discipline imposed on them has made them natural,
and that by dint of flowing between dikes they are settled down into
their accustomed beds.  The truth is that, like all brute forces, like
a stream or a torrent, they only remain in these under constraint; it
is the dike which, through its resistance, produces this moderation.
Another force equal to their force had to be installed against their
outbreaks and devastation, graduated according to their scale, all the
firmer as they are more menacing, despotic if need be against their
despotism, in any event constraining and repressive, at the outset a
tribal chief, later an army general, all modes consisting in an
elective or hereditary man-at-arms, possessing vigilant eyes and
vigorous arms, and who, with blows, excites fear and, through fear,
maintains order.  In the regulation and limitation of his blows divers
instrumentalities are employed, a pre-established constitution, a
division of powers, a code of laws, tribunals, and legal formalities.
At the bottom of all these wheels ever appears the principal lever,
the efficacious instrument, namely, the policeman armed against the
savage, brigand and madman each of us harbors, in repose or manacled,
but always living, in the recesses of his own breast.[16]

On the contrary, in the new theory, every principle promulgated,
every precaution taken, every suspicion awaked is aimed against the
policeman.  In the name of the sovereignty of the people all authority
is withdrawn from the government, every prerogative, every initiative,
its continuance and its force.  The people, being sovereign the
government is simply its clerk, and less than its clerk, merely its
domestic.  - Between them "no contract" indefinite or at least
enduring, "and which may be canceled only by mutual consent or the
unfaithfulness of one of the two parties.  It is against the nature of
a political body for the sovereign to impose a law on himself which he
cannot set aside."  -  There is no sacred and inviolable charter
"binding a people to the forms of an established constitution.  The
right to change these is the first guarantee of all rights.  There is
not, and never can be, any fundamental, obligatory law for the entire
body of a people, not even the social contract." -  It is through
usurpation and deception that a prince, an assembly, and a body of
magistrates declare themselves representatives of the people.
"Sovereignty is not to be represented for the same reason that it is
not to be ceded.  .  .  .  The moment a people gives itself
representatives it is no longer free, it exists no more.  .  .  The
English people think themselves free but they deceive themselves; they
are free only during an election of members of parliament; on the
election of these they become slaves and are null.  .  .  the deputies of
the people are not, nor can they be, its representatives; they are
simply its commissioners and can sign no binding final agreement.
Every law not ratified by the people themselves is null and is no
law."[17] -- "A body of laws sanctioned by an assembly of the people
through a fixed constitution of the State does not suffice; other
fixed and periodical assemblies are necessary which cannot be
abolished or extended, so arranged that on a given day the people may
be legitimately convoked by the law, no other formal conviction being
requisite.  .  .  The moment the people are thus assembled the
jurisdiction of the government is to cease, and the executive power is
to be suspended," society commencing anew, while citizens, restored to
their primitive independence, may reconstitute at will, for any period
they determine, the provisional contract to which they have assented
only for a determined time.  "The opening of these assemblies, whose
sole object is to maintain the social compact, should always take
place with two propositions, never suppressed, and which are to be
voted on separately; the first one, whether the sovereign( people) is
willing to maintain the actual form of the government; the second,
whether the people are willing to leave its administration in the
hands of those actually performing its duties."  -  Thus, "the act by
which a people is subject to its chiefs is absolutely only a
commission, a service in which, as simple officers of their sovereign,
they exercise in his name the power of which he has made them
depositories, and which he may modify, limit and resume at
pleasure."[18] Not only does it always reserve to itself "the
legislative power which belongs to it and which can belong only to
it," but again, it delegates and withdraws the executive power
according to its fancy.  Those who exercise it are its employees.  " It
may establish and depose them when it pleases." In relation to it they
have no rights.  "It is not a matter of contract with them but one of
obedience;" they have "no conditions" to prescribe; they cannot demand
of it the fulfillment of any engagement.  -  It is useless to raise the
objection that, according to this, every man of spirit or of culture
will decline our offices, and that our chiefs will bear the character
of lackeys.  We will not leave them the freedom of accepting or
declining office; we impose it on them authoritatively.  "In every true
democracy the magistrature is not an advantage but an onerous burden,
not to be assigned to one more than to another." We can lay hands on
our magistrates, take them by the collar and set them on their benches
in spite of themselves.  By fair means or foul they are the working
subjects (corvéables) of the State, in a lower condition than a valet
or a mechanic, since the mechanic does his work according to
acceptable conditions, and the discharged valet can claim his eight
days' notice to quit.  As soon as the government throws off this humble
attitude it usurps, while constitutions are to proclaim that, in such
an event, insurrection is not only the most sacred right but the most
imperative duty.  - The new theory is now put into practice, and the
dogma of the sovereignty of the people, interpreted by the crowd, is
to result in a complete anarchy, up to the moment when, interpreted by
its leaders, it produces perfect despotism.

IV.  BIRTH OF SOCIALIST THEORY, ITS TWO SIDES.

The second result.  - The new theory leads to despotism.  -
Precedents for this theory.  - Administrative centralization.  - The
Utopia of the Economists.  - Invalidity of preceding rights.  -
Collateral associations not tolerated.  - Complete alienation of the
individual from the community.  - Rights of the State in relation to
property, education and religion.  - The State a Spartan convent.

  For this theory has two aspects; whereas one side leads towards
the perpetual demolition of government, the other results in the
unlimited dictatorship of the State.  The new social contract is not a
historic pact, like the English Declaration of Rights in 1688, or the
Dutch federation in 1579, entered into by actual and living
individuals, admitting acquired situations, groups already formed,
established positions, and drawn up to recognize, define, guarantee
and complete anterior rights.  Antecedent to the social contract no
veritable right exist; for veritable rights are born solely out of the
social contract, the only valid one, since it is the only one agreed
upon between beings perfectly equal and perfectly free, so many
abstract creatures, so many species of mathematical units, all of the
same value, all playing the same part and whose inequality or
constraint never disturbs the common understanding.  Hence at the
moment of its completion, all other facts are nullified.  Property,
family, church, no ancient institution may invoke any right against
the new State.  The area on which it is built up must be considered
vacant; if old structures are partly allowed to remain it is only in
its name and for its benefit, to be enclosed within its barriers and
appropriated to its use; the entire soil of humanity is its property.
On the other hand it is not, according to the American doctrine, an
association for mutual protection, a society like other societies,
circumscribed in its purpose, restricted to its office, limited in its
powers, and by which individuals reserving to themselves the better
portion of their property and persons, assess each other for the
maintenance of an army, a police, tribunals, highways, schools, in
short, the major instruments of public safety and utility, at the same
time withholding the remainder of local, general, spiritual and
material services in favor of private initiative and of spontaneous
associations that may arise as occasion or necessity calls for them.
Our State is not to be a simple utilitarian machine, a convenient,
handy implement, of which the workman avails himself without
abandoning the free use of his hand, or the simultaneous use of other
implements.  Being elder born, the only son and sole representative of
Reason it must, to ensure its sway, leave nothing beyond its grasp.  -
In this respect the old régime paves the way for the new one, while
the established system inclines minds beforehand to the budding
theory.  Through administrative centralization the State already, for a
long time, has its hands everywhere.[19]

"You must know," says Law to the Marquis d'Argenson, "that the
kingdom of France is governed by thirty intendants.  You have neither
parliaments, assemblies or governors, simply thirty masters of
requests, provincial clerks, on whom depends the happiness or misery,
the fruitfulness or sterility of these provinces."

The king, in fact, sovereign, father, and universal guardian,
manages local affairs through his delegates, and intervenes in private
affairs through his favors or lettres-de-cachet(royal orders of
imprisonment).  Such an example and such a course followed for fifty
years excites the imagination.  No other instrument is more useful for
carrying large reforms out at one time.  Hence, far from restricting
the central power the economists are desirous of extending its action.
Instead of setting up new dikes against it they interest themselves
only in destroying what is left of the old dikes still interfering
with it.  "The system of counter-forces in a government," says Quesnay
and his disciples, "is a fatal idea .  .  .  The speculations on which
the system of counter-balance is founded are chimerical .  .  .  .  Let
the government have a full comprehension of its duties and be left
free.  .  .  The State must govern according to the essential laws of
order, and in this case unlimited power is requisite." On the approach
of the Revolution the same doctrine reappears, except in the
substitution of one term for another term.  In the place of the
sovereignty of the king the "Contrat social" substitutes the
sovereignty of the people.  The latter, however, is much more absolute
than the former, and, in the democratic convent which Rousseau
constructs, on Spartan and Roman model, the individual is nothing and
the State everything.

In effect, "the clauses of the social contract reduce themselves to
one, namely, the total transfer of each associate with all his rights
to the community."[20] Every one surrenders himself entirely, "just as
he stands, he and all his forces, of which his property forms a
portion." There is no exception nor reservation; whatever he may have
been previously and whatever may have belonged to him is no longer his
own.  Henceforth whatever he becomes or whatever he may possess
devolves on him only through the delegation of the social body, the
universal proprietor and absolute master.  All rights must be vested in
the State and none in the individual; otherwise there would be
litigation between them, and, "as there is no common superior to
decide between them" their litigation would never end.  One the
contrary, through the complete donation which each one makes of
himself, "the unity is as perfect as possible;" having renounced
himself "he has no further claim to make."

This being admitted let us trace the consequences.  -

In the first place, I enjoy my property only through tolerance and
at second-hand; for, according to the social contract, I have
surrendered it;[21] "it now forms a portion of the national estate;"
If I retain the use of its for the time being it is through a
concession of the State which makes me a "depositary" of it.  And this
favor must not be considered as restitution.  "Far from accepting the
property of individuals society despoils them of it, simply converting
the usurpation into a veritable right, the enjoyment of it into
proprietorship." Previous to the social contract I was possessor not
by right but in fact and even unjustly if I had large possessions;
for, "every man has naturally a right to whatever he needs," and I
have robbed other men of all that I possessed beyond my subsistence.
Hence, so far from the State being under obligation to me, I am under
obligation to it, the property which it returns to me not being mine
but that with which the State favors me.  It follows, accordingly, that
the State may impose conditions on its gift, limit the use I may make
of it, according to its fancy, restrict and regulate my disposition of
it, my right to bequeath it.  "According to nature,[22] the right of
property does not extend beyond the life of its owner; the moment he
dies his possessions are no longer his own.  Thus, to prescribe the
conditions on which he may dispose of it is really less to change his
right in appearance than to extend it in effect." In any event as my
title is an effect of the social contract it is precarious like the
contract itself; a new stipulation suffices to limit it or to destroy
it.  "The sovereign[23] may legitimately appropriate to himself all
property, as was done in Sparta in the time of Lycurgus." In our lay
convent whatever each monk possesses is only a revocable gift by the
convent.

In the second place, this convent is a seminary.  I have no right to
bring up my children in my own house and in my own way.

"As the reason of each man[24] must not be the sole arbiter of his
rights, so much less should the education of children, which is of
more consequence to the State than to fathers, be left to the
intelligence and prejudice of their fathers." "If public authority, by
taking the place of fathers, by assuming this important function, then
acquires their rights through fulfilling their duties, they have so
much the less reason to complain inasmuch as they merely undergo a
change of name, and, under the title of citizens, exercise in common
the same authority over their children that they have separately
exercised under the title of fathers."

In other words you cease to be a father, but, in exchange, become a
school inspector; one is as good as the other, and what complaint have
you to make? Such was the case in that perpetual army called Sparta;
there, the children, genuine regimental children, equally obeyed all
properly formed men.

"Thus public education, within laws prescribed by the government
and under magistrates appointed by sovereign will, is one of the
fundamental maxims of popular or legitimate government."

Through this the citizen is formed in Advance.

"The government gives the national form to souls.[25] Nations, in
the long run, are what the government makes them - soldiers, citizens,
men when so disposed, a populace, canaille if it pleases," being
fashioned by their education.  "Would you obtain an idea of public
education? Read Plato's 'Republic.'[26]....  The best social
institutions are those the best qualified to change man's nature, to
destroy his absolute being, to give him a relative being, and to
convert self into the common unity, so that each individual may not
regard himself as one by himself, but a part of the unity, and no
longer sensitive but through the whole.  An infant, on opening its
eyes, must behold the common patrimony and, to the day of its death,
behold that only....  He should be disciplined so as never to
contemplate the individual except in his relations with the body of
the State."

Such was the practice of Sparta, and the sole aim of the "great
Lycurgus."-

 "All being equal through the law, they must be brought up together
and in the same manner." "The law must regulate the subjects, the
order and the form of their studies." They must, at the very least,
take part in public exercises, in horse-races, in the games of
strength and of agility instituted "to accustom them to law, equality,
fraternity, and competition;" to teach them how "to live under the
eyes of their fellow-citizens and to crave public applause."

 Through these games they become democrats from their early youth,
since, the prizes being awarded, not through the arbitrariness of
masters, but through the cheers of spectators, they accustom
themselves to recognizing as sovereign the legitimate sovereignty,
consisting of the verdict of the assembled people.  The foremost
interest of the State is, always, to form the wills of those by which
it lasts, to prepare the votes that are to maintain it, to uproot
passions in the soul that might be opposed to it, to implant passions
that will prove favorable to it, to fix firmly with the breasts of its
future citizens the sentiments and prejudices it will at some time
need.[27] If it does not secure the children it will not possess the
adults, Novices in a convent must be as monks, otherwise, when they
grow up, the convent will no longer exist.

Finally, our lay convent has its own religion, a lay religion.  If I
possess any other it is through its condescension and under
restrictions.  It is, by nature, hostile to other associations than its
own; they are rivals, they annoy it, they absorb the will and pervert
the votes of its members.

"To ensure a full declaration of the general will it is an
important matter not to allow any special society in the State, and
that each citizen should pronounce according to it alone."[28]
"Whatever breaks up social unity is worthless," and it would be better
for the State if there were no Church.  -

Not only is every church suspicious but, if I am a Christian, my
belief is regarded unfavorably.  According to this new legislator
"nothing is more opposed to the social spirits than Christianity.  .  .
.  A society of true Christians would no longer form a society of men."
For, "the Christian patrimony is not of this world." It cannot
zealously serve the State, being bound by its conscience to support
tyrants.  Its law "preaches only servitude and dependence.  .  .  it is
made for a slave," and never will a citizen be made out of a slave.
"Christian Republic, each of these two words excludes the other."
Therefore, if the future Republic assents to my profession of
Christianity, it is on the understood condition that my doctrine shall
be shut up in my mind, without even affecting my heart.  If I am a
Catholic, (and twenty-five out of twenty-six million Frenchmen are
like me), my condition is worse.  For the social pact does not tolerate
an intolerant religion; any sect that condemns other sects is a public
enemy; "whoever presumes to say that there is no salvation outside the
church, must be driven out of the State."

 Should I be, finally, a free-thinker, a positivist or skeptic, my
situation is little better.

"There is a civil religion," a catechism, "a profession of faith,
of which the sovereign has the right to dictate the articles, not
exactly as religious dogmas but as sentiments of social import without
which we cannot be a good citizen or a loyal subject." These articles
embrace "the existence of a powerful, intelligent, beneficent,
foreseeing and provident divinity, the future life, the happiness of
the righteous, the punishment of the wicked, the sacredness of the
social contract and of the laws.[29] Without forcing anyone to believe
in this creed, whoever does not believe in it must be expelled from
the State; it is necessary to banish such persons not on account of
impiety, but as unsociable beings, incapable of sincerely loving law
and justice and, if need be, of giving up life for duty."

Take heed that this profession of faith be not a vain one, for a
new inquisition is to test its sincerity.

"Should any person, after having publicly recognized these dogmas,
act as an unbeliever, let him be punished with death.  He has committed
the greatest of crimes: he has lied before the law."

Truly, as I said above, we are in a convent



V.  SOCIAL CONTRACT, SUMMARY.

Complete triumph and last excesses of classic reason.  - How it
becomes monomania.  - Why its work is not enduring.

These articles are all inevitable consequences of the social
contract.  The moment I enter the corporation I abandon my own
personality; I abandon, by this act, my possessions, my children, my
church, and my opinions.  I cease to be proprietor, father, Christian
and philosopher.  The state is my substitute in all these functions.  In
place of my will, there is henceforth the public will, that is to say,
in theory, the mutable absolutism of a majority counted by heads,
while in fact, it is the rigid absolutism of the assembly, the
faction, the individual who is custodian of the public authority.  -
On this principle an outburst of boundless conceit takes place.  The
very first year Grégoire states in the tribune of the Constituent
Assembly, "we might change religion if we pleased, but we have no such
desire." A little later the desire comes, and it is to be carried out;
that of Holbach is proposed, then that of Rousseau, and they dare go
much farther.  In the name of Reason, of which the State alone is the
representative and interpreter, they undertake to unmake and make
over, in conformity with Reason and with Reason only, all customs,
festivals, ceremonies, and costumes, the era, the calendar, weights
and measures, the names of the seasons, months, weeks and days, of
places and monuments, family and baptismal names, complimentary
titles, the tone of discourse, the mode of salutation, of greeting, of
speaking and of writing, in such a fashion, that the Frenchman, as
formerly with the puritan or the Quaker, remodeled even in his inward
substance, exposes, through the smallest details of his conduct and
exterior, the dominance of the all-powerful principle which refashions
his being and the inflexible logic which controls his thoughts.  This
constitutes the final result and complete triumph of the classic
spirit.  Installed in narrow brains, incapable of entertaining two
related ideas, it is to become a cold or furious monomania, fiercely
and unrelentingly destroying a past it curses, and attempting to
establish a millennium, and all in the name of an illusory contract,
at once anarchical and despotic, which unfetters insurrection and
justifies dictatorship; all to end in a conflicting social order
resembling sometimes a drunken orgy of demons, and sometimes a Spartan
convent; all aimed at replacing the real human being, slowly formed by
his past with an improvised robot, who, through its own debility, will
collapse when the external and mechanical force that keeps it up will
no longer sustain it.

____________________________________________________________________

Notes:

[1] Barrère, "Point du jour," No.  1, (June 15, 1789).  " You are
summoned to give history a fresh start."

[2] Condorcet, ibid., "Tableau des progrès de l'esprit humain," the
tenth epoch.  "The methods of the mathematical sciences, applied to new
objects, have opened new roads to the moral and political sciences." -
Cf.  Rousseau, in the "Contrat Social," the mathematical calculation of
the fraction of sovereignty to which each individual is entitled.

[3] Saint-Lambert, "Catéchisme universel," the first dialogue, p.
17.

[4] Condorcet, ibid., ninth epoch.  "From this single truth the
publicists have been able to derive the rights of man."

[5] Rousseau still entertained admiration for Montesquieu but, at
the same time, with some reservation; afterwards, however, the theory
developed itself, every historical right being rejected.  "Then," says
Condorcet, (ibid., ninth epoch), "they found themselves obliged
abandon a false and crafty policy which, forgetful of men deriving
equal rights through their nature, attempted at one time to estimate
those allowed to them according to extent of territory, the
temperature of the climate, the national character, the wealth of the
population, the degree of perfection of their commerce and industries,
and again to apportion the same rights unequally among diverse classes
of men, bestowing them on birth, riches and professions, and thus
creating opposing interests and opposing powers, for the purpose of
subsequently establishing an equilibrium alone rendered necessary by
these institutions themselves and which the danger of their tendencies
by no means corrects."

[6] Condillac, "Logique."

[7] "Histoire de France par Estampes," 1789.  (In the collection of
engravings, Bibliotheque Nationale de Paris.)

[8] Mme.  de Genlis, "Souvenirs de Félicie," 371-391.

[9] De Tocqueville, "L'Ancien régime," 237.  - Cf.  "L'an 2440," by
Mercier, III.  vols.  One of these lovely daydreams in all its detail
may be found here.  The work was first published in 1770.  "The
Revolution," says one of the characters, "was brought about without an
effort, through the heroism of a great man, a royal philosopher worthy
of power, because he despised it," etc.  (Tome II.  109.)

[10] "Mémoires de M. Bouillé," p.70.  - Cf.  Barante, "Tableau de la
litt.  française au dixhuitième siècle," p.  318.  "Civilization and
enlightenment were supposed to have allayed all passions and softened
all characters.  It seemed as if morality had become easy of practice
and that the balance of social order was so well adjusted that nothing
could disturb it."

[11] See in Rousseau, in the "Lettre à M. de Beaumont," a scene of
this description, the establishment of deism and toleration,
associated with a similar discourse.

[12] Roux et Buchez, "Histoire parlementaire," IV.  322, the address
made on the 11th Feb., 1790.  "What an affecting and sublime address,"
says a deputy.  It was greeted by the Assembly, with "unparalleled
applause." The whole address ought to have been quoted entire.

[13] The number of cerebral cells is estimated (the cortical layer)
at twelve hundred millions (in 1880)and the fibers binding them
together at four thousand millions.  (Today in 1990 it is thought that
the brain contains one million million  neurons and many times more
fibers.  SR.)

[14] In his best-selling book "The Blind Watchmaker",(Published
1986) the biologist Richard Dawkins writes: "All appearances to the
contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of
physics, albeit deployed in a very special way.  A true watchmaker has
foresight: he designs his cogs and springs, and plans their
interconnections, with a future purpose in his mind's eye.  Natural
selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin
discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence
and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind.  It
has no mind and no mind's eye.  it does not plan for the future.  It has
no vision, no foresight, no sight at all.  If it can be said to play
the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker." (SR.)

[15] Already Michel Montaigne (1533-1592) had noted man's tendency
to over-estimate his own powers of judgment:

'So, to return to myself, the sole feature for which I hold myself
in some esteem is that in which no man has ever thought himself
defective.  My self-approbation is common, and shared by all.  For who
has ever considered himself lacking in common sense? This would be a
self-contradictory proposition.  Lack of sense is a disease that never
exists when it is seen; it is most tenacious and strong, yet the first
glance from the patient's eye pierces it through and disperses it, as
a dense mist is dispersed by the sun's beams.  To accuse oneself would
amount to self-absolution.  There never was a street-porter or a silly
woman who was not sure of having as much sense as was necessary.  We
readily recognize in others a superiority in courage, physical
strength, experience, agility, or beauty.  But a superior judgment we
concede to nobody.  And we think that we could ourselves have
discovered the reasons which occur naturally to others, if only we had
looked in the same direction.') (SR.)

[16] My father's cousin, a black-smith issue from a long line of
country black-smiths, born in 1896, used to say that the basic
principle elevating children was to ensure "that the child never
should be able to exclude the possibility of good thrashing." (SR).

[17] Rousseau, "Contrat social," I, ch.  7; III.  ch.  13, 14, 15, 18;
IV.  ch.  1.  - Cf.  Condorcet, ninth epoch.

[18] Rousseau, "Contrat social," III, 1, 18; IV, 3.

[19] De Tocqueville, "L'Ancien régime," book II.  entire, and book
III.  ch.  3.

[20] Rousseau, "Contrat social." I.6.

[21] Ibidem I.  9.  "The State in relation to its members is master
of all their possessions according to the social compact .  .  .
possessors are considered as depositaries of the public wealth."

[22] Rousseau, "Discours sur l'Economie politique," 308.

[23] Ibid.  "Emile," book V.  175.

[24] Rousseau, "Discours sur l'Economie politique," 302

[25] Rousseau, on the "Government de Pologne," 277, 283, 287.

[26] Ibid.  "Emile," book I.

[27] Morelly, "Code de la nature." "At the age of five all children
should be removed their families and brought up in common, at the
charge of the State, in a uniform manner." A similar project,
perfectly Spartan, was found among the papers of St.-Just.

[28] Rousseau, "Contrat social," II.  3; IV.8.

[29] Cf.  Mercier, "L'an 2240," I.  ch.  17 and 18.  From 1770 on, he
traces the programme of a system of worship similar to that of the
Théophilanthropists, the chapter being entitled: "Pas si éloigné qu'on
pense."




BOOK FOURTH.   THE PROPAGATION OF THE DOCTRINE.

CHAPTER I.

SUCCESS OF THIS PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE.   - FAILURE OF THE SAME
PHILOSOPHY IN ENGLAND.

   Several similar theories have in the past traversed the
imagination of men, and similar theories are likely do so again.  In
all ages and in all countries, it sufficed that man's concept of his
own nature changed for, as an indirect consequence, new utopias and
discoveries would sprout in the fields of politics and religion.[1]  -
But this does not suffice for the propagation of the new doctrine nor,
more important, for theory to be put into practice.  Although born in
England, the philosophy of the eighteenth century could not develop
itself in England; the fever for demolition and reconstruction
remained but briefly and superficial there.  Deism, atheism,
materialism, skepticism, ideology, the theory of the return to nature,
the proclamations of the rights of man, all the temerities of
Bolingbroke, Collins, Toland, Tindal and Mandeville, the bold ideas of
Hume, Hartley, James Mill and Bentham, all the revolutionary
doctrines, were so many hotbed plants produced here and there, in the
isolated studies of a few thinkers: out in the open, after blooming
for a while, subject to a vigorous competition with the old vegetation
to which the soil belonged, they failed[2].   -  On the contrary, in
France, the seed imported from England, takes root and spreads with
extraordinary vigor.  After the Regency it is in full bloom[3].  Like
any species favored by soil and climate, it invades all the fields,
appropriating light and air to itself, scarcely allowing in its shade
a few puny specimens of a hostile species, a survivor of an antique
flora like Rollin, or a specimen of an eccentric flora like Saint-
Martin.  With large trees and dense thickets, through masses of
brushwood and low plants, such as Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau,
Diderot, d'Alembert and Buffon, or Duclos, Mably, Condillac, Turgot,
Beaumarchais, Bernadin de Saint-Pierre, Barthélemy and Thomas, such as
a crowd of journalists, compilers and conversationalists, or the elite
of the philosophical, scientific and literary multitude, it occupies
the Academy, the stage, the drawing room and the debate.  All the
important persons of the century are its offshoots, and among these
are some of the grandest ever produced by humanity.   -  This was
possible because the seed had fallen on suitable ground, that is to
say, on the soil in the homeland of the classic spirit.  In this land
of the raison raisonnante[4] it no longer encounters the antagonists
who impeded its growth on the other side of the Channel, and it not
only immediately acquires vigor of sap but the propagating organ which
it required as well.

I.   THE PROPAGATING ORGAN, ELOQUENCE.

Causes of this difference.  - This art of writing in France.  - Its
superiority at this epoch.  - It serves as the vehicle of new ideas.
- Books are written for people of the world.  - This accounts for
philosophy descending to the drawing room.

This organ is the "talent of speech, eloquence applied to the
gravest subjects, the talent for making things clear." [5]"The great
writers of this nation," says their adversary, "express themselves
better than those of any other nation.  Their books give but little
information to true savants," but "through the art of expression they
influence men" and "the mass of men, constantly repelled from the
sanctuary of the sciences by the dry style and bad taste of (other)
scientific writers, cannot resist the seductions of the French style
and method." Thus the classic spirit that furnishes the ideas likewise
furnishes the means of conveying them, the theories of the eighteenth
century being like those seeds provided with wings which float and
distribute themselves on all soils.  There is no book of that day not
written for people of the high society, and even for women of this
class.  In Fontenelle's dialogues on the Plurality of worlds the
principal person age is a marchioness.  Voltaire composes his
"Métaphysique" and his "Essai sur les Moeurs" for Madame du Chatelet,
and Rousseau his "Emile" for Madame d'Epinay.  Condillac wrote the
"Traité des Sensations" from suggestions of Mademoiselle Ferrand, and
he sets forth instructions to young ladies how to read his "Logique."
Baudeau dedicates and explains to a lady his "Tableau Economique."
Diderot's most profound work is a conversation between Mademoiselle de
l'Espinasse and d'Alembert and Bordeu[6].  Montesquieu had placed an
invocation to the muses in the middle of the "Esprit des Lois." Almost
every work is a product of the drawing-room, and it is always one
that, before the public, has been presented with its beginnings.  In
this respect the habit is so strong as to last up to the end of 1789;
the harangues about to be made in the National Assembly are also
passages of bravura previously rehearsed before ladies at an evening
entertainment.  The American Ambassador, a practical man, explains to
Washington with sober irony the fine academic and literary parade
preceding the political tournament in public[7].

"The speeches are made beforehand in a small society of young men
and women, among them generally the fair friend of the speaker is one,
or else the fair whom he means to make his friend,; and the society
very politely give their approbation, unless the lady who gives the
tone to that circle chances to reprehend something, which is of course
altered, if not amended."

It is not surprising, with customs of this kind, that professional
philosophers should become men of society.  At no time or in any place
have they been so to the same extent, nor so habitually.  The great
delight of a man of genius or of learning here, says an English
traveler, is to reign over a brilliant assembly of people of
fashion[8].   Whilst in England they bury themselves morosely in their
books, living amongst themselves and appearing in society only on
condition of "doing some political drudgery," that of journalist or
pamphleteer in the service of a party, in France they dine out every
evening, and constitute the ornaments and amusement of the drawing-
rooms to which they resort to converse[9].  There is not a house in
which dinners are given that has not its titular philosopher, and,
later on, its economist and man of science.  In the various memoirs,
and in the collections of correspondence, we track them from one
drawing room to another, from one chateau to another, Voltaire to
Cirey at Madame du Chatelet's, and then home, at Ferney where he has a
theater and entertains all Europe; Rousseau to Madame d'Epinay's, and
M. de Luxembourg's; the Abbé Barthelemy to the Duchesse de Choiseul's;
Thomas, Marmontel and Gibbon to Madame Necker's; the encyclopedists to
d'Holbach's ample dinners, to the plain and discreet table of Madame
Geoffrin, and to the little drawing room of Mademoiselle de
L'Espinasse, all belonging to the great central state drawing-room,
that is to say, to the French Academy, where each newly elected member
appears to parade his style and obtain from a polished body his
commission of master in the art of discourse.  Such a public imposes
on an author the obligation of being more a writer than a philosopher.
The thinker is expected to concern himself with his sentences as much
as with his ideas.  He is not allowed to be a mere scholar in his
closet, a simple erudite, diving into folios in German fashion, a
metaphysician absorbed with his own meditations, having an audience of
pupils who take notes, and, as readers, men devoted to study and
willing to give themselves trouble, a Kant, who forms for himself a
special language, who waits for a public to comprehend him and who
leaves the room in which he labors only for the lecture-room in which
he delivers his lectures.  Here, on the contrary, in the matter of
expression, all are experts and even professional.  The mathematician
d'Alembert publishes a small treatise on elocution; Buffon, the
naturalist pronounces a discourse on Style; the legist Montesquieu
composes an essay on Taste; the psychologist Condillac writes a volume
on the art of writing.  In this consists their greatest glory;
philosophy owes its entry into society to them.  They withdrew it from
the study, the closed-society and the school, to introduce it into
company and into conversation.

II.  ITS METHOD.

Owing to this method it becomes popular.

"Madame la Maréchale," says one of Diderot's personages,[10].  "I
must consider things from a somewhat higher point of view."  -  " As
high as you please so long as I understand you."  -  "If you do not
understand me it will be my fault."  -  " You are very polite, but you
must know that I have studied nothing but my prayer.  book."  -   That
makes no difference; the pretty woman, ably led on, begins to
philosophize without knowing it, arriving without effort at the
distinction between good and evil, comprehending and deciding on the
highest doctrines of morality and religion.    -  Such is the art of
the eighteenth century, and the art of writing.  People are addressed
who are perfectly familiar with life, but who are commonly ignorant of
orthography, who are curious in all directions, but ill prepared for
any; the object is to bring truth down to their level[11].  Scientific
or too abstract terms are inadmissible; they tolerate only those used
to ordinary conversation.  And this is no obstacle; it is easier to
talk philosophy in this language than to use it for discussing
precedence and clothes.  For, in every abstract question there is some
leading and simple conception on which the rest depends, those of
unity, proportion, mass and motion in mathematics; those of organ,
function and being in physiology; those of sensation, pain, pleasure
and desire in psychology; those of utility, contract and law in
politics and morality; those of capital, production, value, exchange
in political economy, and the, same in the other sciences, all of
these being conceptions derived from passing experience; from which it
follows that, in appealing to common experience by means of a few
familiar circumstances, such as short stories, anecdotes, agreeable
tales, and the like, these conceptions are fashioned anew and rendered
precise.  This being accomplished, almost everything is accomplished;
for nothing then remains but to lead the listener along step by step,
flight by flight, to the remotest consequences.

 "Will Madame la Maréchale have the kindness to recall my
definition? "  -  "I remember it well-do you call that a definition?"
-  "Yes." -"That, then, is philosophy! "  -  "Admirable ! "  -  "And I
have been philosophical? "  -  " As you read prose, without being
aware of it."

The rest is simply a matter of reasoning, that is to say, of
leading on, of putting questions in the right order, and of analysis.
With the conception thus renewed and rectified the truth nearest at
hand is brought out, then out of this, a second truth related to the
first one, and so on to the end, no other obligation being involved in
this method but that of carefully advancing step by step, and of
omitting no intermediary step.   -  With this method one is able to
explain all, to make everything understood, even by women, and even by
women of society.  In the eighteenth century it forms the substance of
all talents, the warp of all masterpieces, the lucidity, popularity
and authority of philosophy.  The "Eloges" of Fontenelle, the
"Philosophe ignorant et le principe d'action" by Voltaire, the "
Lettre à M. de Beaumont," and the "Vicaire Savoyard" by Rousseau, the
"Traité de l'homme" and the "Époques de la Nature" by Buffon, the "
Dialogues sur les blés" by Galiani, the " Considérations" by
d'Alembert, on mathematics, the " Langue des Calculs" and the
"Logique" by Condillac, and, a little later, the "Exposition du
système du Monde" by Laplace, and "Discours généraux" by Bichat and
Cuvier; all are based on this method[12].  Finally, this is the method
which Condillac erects into a theory under the name of ideology, soon
acquiring the ascendancy of a dogma, and which then seems to sum up
all methods.  At the very least it sums up the process by which the
philosophers of the century obtained their audience, propagated their
doctrine and achieved their success.

III.  ITS POPULARITY.

Owing to style it becomes pleasing.  - Two stimulants peculiar to
the 18th century, coarse humor and irony.

Thanks to this method one can be understood; but, to be read,
something more is necessary.  I compare the eighteenth century to a
company of people around a table; it is not sufficient that the food
before them be well prepared, well served, within reach and easy to
digest, but it is important that it should be some choice dish or,
better still, some dainty.  The intellect is Epicurean; let us supply
it with savory, delicate viands adapted to its taste; it will eat so
much the more owing to its appetite being sharpened by sensuality.
Two special condiments enter into the cuisine of this century, and,
according to the hand that makes use of them, they furnish all
literary dishes with a coarse or delicate seasoning.  In an Epicurean
society, to which a return to nature and the rights of instinct are
preached, voluptuous images and ideas present themselves
involuntarily; this is the appetizing, exciting spice-box.  Each guest
at the table uses or abuses it; many empty its entire contents on
their plate.  And I do not allude merely to the literature read in
secret, to the extraordinary books Madame d'Audlan, governess to the
French royal children, peruses, and which stray off into the hands of
the daughters of Louis XV,[13] nor to other books, still more
extraordinary,[14] in which philosophical arguments appear as an
interlude between filth and the illustrations, and which are kept by
the ladies of the court on their toilet-tables, under the title of
"Heures de Paris." I refer here to the great men, to the masters of
the public intellect.  With the exception of Buffon, all put pimento
into their sauces, that is to say, loose talk or coarseness of
expression.  We find this even in the" Esprit des Lois;" there is an
enormous amount of it, open and covered up, in the "Lettres Persanes."
Diderot, in his two great novels, puts it in by handfuls, as if during
an orgy.  The teeth crunch on it like so many grains of pepper, on
every page of Voltaire.  We find it, not only piquant, but strong and
of burning intensity, in the "Nouvelle Héloïse," scores of times in "
Emile," and, in the "Confessions," from one end to the other.  It was
the taste of the day.  M. de Malesherbes, so upright and so grave,
committed "La Pucelle" to memory and recited it.  We have from the pen
of Saint-Just, the gloomiest of the "Mountain," a poem as lascivious
as that of Voltaire, while Madame Roland, the noblest of the
Girondins, has left us confessions as venturesome and specific as
those of Rousseau[15].   -  On the other hand there is a second box,
that containing the old Gallic salt, that is to say, humor and
raillery.  Its mouth is wide open in the hands of a philosophy
proclaiming the sovereignty of reason.  Whatever is contrary to Reason
is to it absurd and therefore open to ridicule.  The moment the solemn
hereditary mask covering up an abuse is brusquely and adroitly torn
aside, we feel a curious spasm, the corners of our mouth stretching
apart and our breast heaving violently, as at a kind of sudden relief,
an unexpected deliverance, experiencing a sense of our recovered
superiority, of our revenge being gratified and of an act of justice
having been performed.  But it depends on the mode in which the mask
is struck off whether the laugh shall be in turn light or loud,
suppressed or unbridled, now amiable and cheerful, or now bitter and
sardonic.  Humor (la plaisanterie) comports with all aspects, from
buffoonery to indignation; no literary seasoning affords such a
variety, or so many mixtures, nor one that so well enters into
combination with that above-mentioned.  The two together, from the
middle ages down, form the principal ingredients employed by the
French cuisine in the composition of its most agreeable dainties,  -
fables, tales, witticisms, jovial songs and waggeries, the eternal
heritage of a good-humored, mocking people, preserved by La Fontaine
athwart the pomp and sobriety of the seventeenth century, and, in the
eighteenth, reappearing everywhere at the philosophic banquet.  Its
charm is great to the brilliant company at this table, so amply
provided, whose principal occupation is pleasure and amusement.  It is
all the greater because, on this occasion, the passing disposition is
in harmony with hereditary instinct, and because the taste of the
epoch is fortified by the national taste.  Add to all this the
exquisite art of the cooks, their talent in commingling, in
apportioning and in concealing the condiments, in varying and
arranging the dishes, the certainty of their hand, the finesse of
their palate, their experience in processes, in the traditions and
practices which, already for a hundred years, form of French prose the
most delicate nourishment of the intellect.  It is not strange to find
them skilled in regulating human speech, in extracting from it its
quintessence and in distilling its full delight.


IV.  THE MASTERS.

The art and processes of the masters.  - Montesquieu.  - Voltaire.
- Diderot.  - Rousseau.  - "The Marriage of Figaro."

In this respect four among them are superior, Montesquieu,
Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau.  It seems sufficient to mention their
names.  Modern Europe has no greater writers.  And yet their talent
must be closely examined to properly comprehend their power.-  In tone
and style Montesquieu is the first.  No writer is more master of
himself, more outwardly calm, more sure of his meaning.  His voice is
never boisterous; he expresses the most powerful thoughts with
moderation.  There is no gesticulation; exclamations, the abandonment
of impulse, all that is irreconcilable with decorum is repugnant to
his tact, his reserve, his dignity.  He seems to be always addressing
a select circle of people with acute minds, and in such a way as to
render them at every moment conscious of their acuteness.  No flattery
could be more delicate; we feel grateful to him for making us
satisfied with our intelligence.  We must possess some intelligence to
be able to read him, for he deliberately curtails developments and
omits transitions; we are required to supply these and to comprehend
his hidden meanings.  He is rigorously systematic but the system is
concealed, his concise completed sentences succeeding each other
separately, like so many precious coffers or caskets, now simple and
plain in aspect, now superbly chased and decorated, but always full.
Open them and each contains a treasure; here is placed in narrow
compass a rich store of reflections, of emotions, of discoveries, our
enjoyment being the more intense because we can easily retain all this
for a moment in the palm of our hand.  "That which usually forms a
grand conception," he himself says, "is a thought so expressed as to
reveal a number of other thoughts, and suddenly disclosing what we
could not anticipate without patient study." This, indeed, is his
manner; he thinks with summaries; he concentrates the essence of
despotism in a chapter of three lines.  The summary itself often bears
the air of an enigma, of which the charm is twofold; we have the
pleasure of comprehension accompanying the satisfaction of divining.
In all subjects he maintains this supreme discretion, this art of
indicating without enforcing, these reticences, the smile that never
becomes a laugh.

 "In my defense of the 'Esprit des Lois,"' he says, "that which
gratifies me is not to see venerable theologians crushed to the ground
but to see them glide down gently."

 He excels in tranquil irony, in polished disdain,[16] in disguised
sarcasm.  His Persians judge France as Persians, and we smile at their
errors; unfortunately the laugh is not against them but against
ourselves, for their error is found to be a verity[17].  This or that
letter, in a sober vein, seems a comedy at their expense without
reflecting upon us, full of Muslim prejudices and of oriental
conceit;[18] reflect a moment, and our conceit, in this relation,
appears no less.  Blows of extraordinary force and reach are given in
passing, as if thoughtlessly, against existing institutions, against
the transformed Catholicism which "in the present state of Europe,
cannot last five hundred years," against the degenerate monarchy which
causes useful citizens to starve to fatten parasite courtiers[19].
The entire new philosophy blooms out in his hands with an air of
innocence, in a pastoral romance, in a simple prayer, in an artless
letter[20].   None of the gifts which serve to arrest and fix the
attention are wanting in this style, neither grandeur of imagination
nor profound sentiment, vivid characterization, delicate gradations,
vigorous precision, a sportive grace, unlooked-for burlesque, nor
variety of representation.  But, amidst so many ingenious tricks,
apologues, tales, portraits and dialogues, in earnest as well as when
masquerading, his deportment throughout is irreproachable and his tone
is perfect.  If; as an author, he develops a paradox it is with almost
English gravity.  If he fully exposes indecency it is with decent
terms.  In the full tide of buffoonery, as well as in the full blast
of license, he is ever the well-bred man, born and brought up in the
aristocratic circle in which full liberty is allowed but where good-
breeding is supreme, where every idea is permitted but where words are
weighed, where one has the privilege of saying what he pleases, but on
condition that he never forgets himself.

A circle of this kind is a small one, comprising only a select few;
to be understood by the multitude requires another tone of voice.
Philosophy demands a writer whose principal occupation is a diffusion
of it, who is unable to keep it to himself; who pours it out like a
gushing fountain, who offers it to everybody, daily and in every form,
in broad streams and in small drops, without exhaustion or weariness,
through every crevice and by every channel, in prose, in verse, in
imposing and in trifling poems, in the drama, in history, in novels,
in pamphlets, in pleadings, in treatises, in essays, in dictionaries,
in correspondence, openly and in secret, in order that it may
penetrate to all depths and in every soil; such was Voltaire.    -
"I have accomplished more in my day," he says somewhere, "than either
Luther or Calvin," in which he is mistaken.  The truth is, however, he
has something of their spirit.  Like them he is desirous of changing
the prevailing religion, he takes the attitude of the founder of a
sect, he recruits and binds together proselytes, he writes letters of
exhortation, of direction and of predication, he puts watchwords in
circulation, he furnishes "the brethren" with a device; his passion
resembles the zeal of an apostle or of a prophet.  Such a spirit is
incapable of reserve; it is militant and fiery by nature; it
apostrophizes, reviles and improvises; it writes under the dictation
of impressions; it allows itself every species of utterance and, if
need be, the coarsest.  It thinks by explosions; its emotions are
sudden starts, and its images so many sparks; it lets the rein go
entirely; it gives itself up to the reader and hence it takes
possession of him.  Resistance is impossible; the contagion is too
overpowering.  A creature of air and flame, the most excitable that
ever lived, composed of more ethereal and more throbbing atoms than
those of other men; none is there whose mental machinery is more
delicate, nor whose equilibrium is at the same time more shifting and
more exact.  He may be compared to those accurate scales that are
affected by a breath, but alongside of which every other measuring
apparatus is incorrect and clumsy.   -   But, in this delicate balance
only the lightest weights, the finest specimen must be placed; on this
condition only it rigorously weighs all substances; such is Voltaire,
involuntarily, through the demands of his intellect, and in his own
behalf as much as in that of his readers.  An entire philosophy, ten
volumes of theology, an abstract science, a special library, an
important branch of erudition, of human experience and invention, is
thus reduced in his hands to a phrase or to a stanza.  From the
enormous mass of riven or compact scorioe he extracts whatever is
essential, a grain of gold or of copper as a specimen of the rest,
presenting this to us in its most convenient and most manageable form,
in a simile, in a metaphor, in an epigram that becomes a proverb.  In
this no ancient or modern writer approaches him; in simplification and
in popularization he has not his equal in the world.  Without
departing from the usual conversational tone, and as if in sport, he
puts into little portable phrases the greatest discoveries and
hypotheses of the human mind, the theories of Descartes, Malebranche,
Leibnitz, Locke and Newton, the diverse religions of antiquity and of
modern times, every known system of physics, physiology, geology,
morality, natural law, and political economy,[21] in short, all the
generalized conceptions in every order of knowledge to which humanity
had attained in the eighteenth century.    -  Voltaire's inclination
is so strong that it carries him too far; he belittles great things by
rendering them accessible.  Religion, legend, ancient popular poesy,
the spontaneous creations of instinct, the vague visions of primitive
tunes are not thus to be converted into small current coin; they are
not subjects of amusing and lively conversation.  A piquant witticism
is not an expression of all this, but simply a travesty.  But how
charming to Frenchmen, and to people of the world! And what reader can
abstain from a book containing all human knowledge summed up in
piquant witticisms? For it is really a summary of human knowledge, no
important idea, as far as I can see, being wanting to a man whose
breviary consisted of the "Dialogues," the "Dictionary," and the
"Novels." Read them over and over five or six times, and we then form
some idea of their vast contents.  Not only do views of the world and
of man abound in them, but again they swarm with positive and even
technical details, thousands of little facts scattered throughout,
multiplied and precise details on astronomy, physics, geography,
physiology, statistics, and on the history of all nations, the
innumerable and personal experiences of a man who has himself read the
texts, handled the instruments, visited the countries, taken part in
the industries, and associated with the persons, and who, in the
precision of his marvelous memory, in the liveliness of his ever-
blazing imagination, revives or sees, as with the eye itself,
everything that he states and as he states it.  It is a unique talent,
the rarest in a classic era, the most precious of all, since it
consists in the display of actual beings, not through the gray veil of
abstractions, but in themselves, as they are in nature and in history,
with their visible color and forms, with their accessories and
surroundings in time and space, a peasant at his cart, a Quaker in his
meeting-house, a German baron in his castle, Dutchmen, Englishmen,
Spaniards, Italians, Frenchmen, in their homes,[22] a great lady, a
designing woman, provincials, soldiers, prostitutes,[23] and the rest
of the human medley, on every step of the social ladder, each an
abridgment of his kind and in the passing light of a sudden flash.

For, the most striking feature of this style is the prodigious
rapidity, the dazzling and bewildering stream of novelties, ideas,
images, events, landscapes, narratives, dialogues, brief little
pictures, following each other rapidly as if in a magic-lantern,
withdrawn almost as soon as presented by the impatient magician who,
in the twinkling of an eye, girdles the world and, constantly
accumulating one on top of the other, history, fable, truth and fancy,
the present time and times past, frames his work now with a parade as
absurd as that of a country fair, and now with a fairy scene more
magnificent than all those of the opera.  To amuse and be amused, "to
diffuse his spirit in every imaginable mode, like a glowing furnace
into which all substances are thrown by turns to evolve every species
of flame, sparkle and odor," is his first instinct.  "Life," he says
again, "is an infant to be rocked until it goes to sleep." Never was a
mortal more excited and more exciting, more incapable of silence and
more hostile to ennui,[24]  better endowed for conversation, more
evidently destined to become the king of a sociable century in which,
with six pretty stories, thirty witticisms and some confidence in
himself, a man could obtain a social passport and the certainty of
being everywhere welcome.  Never was there a writer possessing to so
high a degree and in such abundance every qualification of the
conversationalist, the art of animating and of enlivening discourse,
the talent for giving pleasure to people of society.  Perfectly
refined when he chose to be, confining himself without inconvenience
to strict decorum, of finished politeness, of exquisite gallantry,
deferential without being servile, fond without being mawkish,[25] and
always at his ease, it suffices that he should be before the public,
to fall naturally into the proper tone, the discreet ways, the winning
half-smile of the well-bred man who, introducing his readers into his
mind, does them the honors of the place.  Are you on familiar terms
with him, and of the small private circle in which he freely unbends
himself, with closed doors? You never tire of laughing.  With a sure
hand and without seeming to touch it, he abruptly tears aside the veil
hiding a wrong, a prejudice, a folly, in short, any human idolatry.
The real figure, misshapen, odious or dull, suddenly appears in this
instantaneous flash; we shrug our shoulders.  This is the risibility
of an agile, triumphant reason.  We have another in that of the gay
temperament, of the droll improvisator, of the man keeping youthful, a
child, a boy even to the day of his death, and who "gambols on his own
tombstone." He is fond of caricature, exaggerating the features of
faces, bringing grotesques on the stage,[26] walking them about in all
lights like marionettes, never weary of taking them up and of making
them dance in new costumes; in the very midst of his philosophy, of
his propaganda and polemics, he sets up his portable theater in full
blast, exhibiting oddities, the scholar, the monk, the inquisitor,
Maupertuis, Pompignan, Nonotte, Fréron, King David, and countless
others who appear before us, capering and gesticulating in their
harlequin attire.  - When a farcical talent is thus moved to tell the
truth, humor becomes all-powerful; for it gratifies the profound and
universal instincts of human nature: to the malicious curiosity, to
the desire to mock and belitte, to the aversion to being in need or
under constraint, those sources of bad moods which task convention,
etiquette and social obligation with  wearing the burdensome cloak of
respect and of decency; moments occur in life when the wisest is not
sorry to throw this half aside and even cast it off entirely.  - On
each page, now with the bold stroke of a hardy naturalist, now with
the quick turn of a mischievous monkey, Voltaire lets the solemn or
serious drapery fall, disclosing man, the poor biped, and in which
attitudes![27]  Swift alone dared to present similar pictures.  What
physiological crudities relating to the origin and end of our most
exalted sentiments! What disproportion between such feeble reason and
such powerful instincts! What recesses in the wardrobes of politics
and religion concealing their foul linen! We laugh at all this so as
not to weep, and yet behind this laughter there are tears; he ends
sneeringly, subsiding into a tone of profound sadness, of mournful
pity.  In this degree, and with such subjects, it is only an effect of
habit, or as an expedient, a mania of inspiration, a fixed condition
of the nervous machinery rushing headlong over everything, without a
break and in full speed.  Gaiety, let it not be forgotten, is still a
incentive of action, the last that keeps man erect in France, the best
in maintaining the tone of his spirit, his strength and his powers of
resistance, the most intact in an age when men, and women too,
believed it incumbent on them to die people of good society, with a
smile and a jest on their lips[28].

When the talent of a writer thus accords with public inclinations
it is a matter of little import whether he deviates or fails since he
is following the universal tendency.  He may wander off or besmirch
himself in vain, for his audience is only the more pleased, his
defects serving him as advantageously as his good qualities.  After
the first generation of healthy minds the second one comes on, the
intellectual balance here being equally inexact.  "Diderot," says
Voltaire, "is too hot an oven, everything that is baked in it getting
burnt." Or rather, he is an eruptive volcano which, for forty years,
discharges ideas of every order and species, boiling and fused
together, precious metals, coarse scorioe and fetid mud; the steady
stream overflows at will according to the roughness of the ground, but
always displaying the ruddy light and acrid fumes of glowing lava.  He
is not master of his ideas, but his ideas master him; he is under
submission to them; he has not that firm foundation of common
practical sense which controls their impetuosity and ravages, that
inner dyke of social caution which, with Montesquieu and Voltaire,
bars the way to outbursts.  Everything with him rushes out of the
surcharged crater, never picking its way, through the first fissure or
crevice it finds, according to his haphazard reading, a letter, a
conversation, an improvisation, and not in frequent small jets as with
Voltaire, but in broad currents tumbling blindly down the most
precipitous declivities of the century.  Not only does he descend thus
to the very depths of anti-religious and anti-social doctrines, with
logical and paradoxical rigidity, more impetuously and more
obstreperously than d'Holbach himself; but again he falls into and
sports himself in the slime of the age, consisting of obscenity, and
into the beaten track of declamation.  In his leading novels he dwells
a long time on salacious equivocation, or on a scene of lewdness.
Crudity with him is not extenuated by malice or glossed over by
elegance.  He is neither refined nor pungent; is quite incapable, like
the younger Crébillon, of depicting the scapegrace of ability.  He is
a new-comer, a parvenu in standard society; you see in him a commoner,
a powerful reasoner, an indefatigable workman and great artist,
introduced, through the customs of the day, at a supper of fashionable
livers.  He engrosses the conversation, directs the orgy, or in the
contagion or on a wager, says more filthy things, more "gueulées,"
than all the guests put together[29].  In like manner, in his dramas,
in his "Essays on Claudius and Nero," in his "Commentary on Seneca,"
in his additions to the "Philosophical History" of Raynal, he forces
the tone of things.  This tone, which then prevails by virtue of the
classic spirit and of the new fashion, is that of sentimental
rhetoric.  Diderot carries it to extremes in the exaggeration of tears
or of rage, in exclamations, in apostrophes, in tenderness of feeling,
in violences, indignation, in enthusiasms, in full-orchestra tirades,
in which the fire of his brains finds employment and an outlet.   -
On the other hand, among so many superior writers, he is the only
genuine artist, the creator of souls, within his mind objects, events
and personages are born and become organized of themselves, through
their own forces, by virtue of natural affinities, involuntarily,
without foreign intervention, in such a way as to live for and in
themselves, safe from the author's intentions, and outside of his
combinations.   The composer of the "Salons," the "Petits Romans," the
"Entretien," the "Paradoxe du Comédien," and especially the "Rêve de
d'Alembert" and the" Neveu de Rameau "is a man of an unique species in
his time.  However alert and brilliant Voltaire's personages may be,
they are always puppets; their action is derivative; always behind
them you catch a glimpse of the author pulling the strings.  With
Diderot, the strings are severed; he is not speaking through the lips
of his characters; they are not his comical loud-speakers or puppets,
but independent and detached persons, with an action of their own, a
personal accent, with their own temperament, passions, ideas,
philosophy, style and spirit, and occasionally, as in the "Neveu de
Rameau," a spirit so original, complex and complete, so alive and so
deformed that, in the natural history of man, it becomes an
incomparable monster and an immortal document.  He has expressed
everything concerning nature,[30] art morality and life[31] in two
small treatises of which twenty successive readings exhaust neither
the charm nor the sense.  Find elsewhere, if you can, a similar stroke
of power and a greater masterpiece, "anything more absurd and more
profound!"[32]  -  Such is the advantage of men of genius possessing
no control over themselves.  They lack discernment but they have
inspiration.  Among twenty works, either soiled, rough or nasty, they
produce a creation, and still better, an animated being, able to live
by itself, before which others, fabricated by merely intellectual
people, resemble simply well-dressed puppets.   -  Hence it is that
Diderot is so great a narrator, a master of dialogue, the equal in
this respect of Voltaire, and, through a quite opposite talent,
believing all he says at the moment of saying it; forgetful of his
very self, carried away by his own recital, listening to inward
voices, surprised with the responses which come to him unexpectedly,
borne along, as if on an unknown river, by the current of action, by
the sinuosities of the conversation inwardly and unconsciously
developed, aroused by the flow of ideas and the leap of the moment to
the most unexpected imagery, extreme in burlesque or extreme in
magnificence, now lyrical even to providing Musset with an entire
stanza,[33] now comic and droll with outbursts unheard of since the
days of Rabelais, always in good faith, always at the mercy of his
subject, of his inventions, of his emotions; the most natural of
writers in an age of artificial literature, resembling a foreign tree
which, transplanted to a parterre of the epoch, swells out and decays
on one side of its stem, but of which five or six branches, thrust out
into full light, surpass the neighboring underwood in the freshness of
their sap and in the vigor of their growth.

Rousseau also is an artisan, a man of the people, ill-adapted to
elegant and refined society, out of his element in a drawing room and,
moreover, of low birth, badly brought up, sullied by a vile and
precocious experience, highly and offensively sensual, morbid in mind
and in body, fretted by superior and discordant faculties, possessing
no tact, and carrying the contamination of his imagination,
temperament and past life into his austere morality and into his
purest idylls;[34] besides this he has no fervor, and in this he is
the opposite of Diderot, avowing himself" that his ideas arrange
themselves in his head with the utmost difficulty, that certain
sentences are turned over and over again in his brain for five or six
nights before putting them on paper, and that a letter on the most
trifling subject costs him hours of fatigue," that he cannot fall into
an easy and agreeable tone, nor succeed otherwise than "in works which
demand application."[35] As an offset to this, style, in this ardent
brain, under the influence of intense, prolonged meditation,
incessantly hammered and rehammered, becomes more concise and of
higher temper than is elsewhere found.  Since La Bruyère we have seen
no more ample, virile phrases, in which anger, admiration,
indignation, studied and concentrated passion, appear with more
rigorous precision and more powerful relief.  He is almost the equal
of La Bruyère in the arrangement of skillful effects, in the aptness
and ingenuity of developments, in the terseness of impressive
summaries, in the overpowering directness of unexpected arguments, in
the multiplicity of literary achievements, in the execution of those
passages of bravura, portraits, descriptions, comparisons, creations,
wherein, as in a musical crescendo, the same idea, varied by a series
of yet more animated expressions, attains to or surpasses, at the last
note, all that is possible of energy and of brilliancy.  Finally, he
has that which is wanting in La Bruyère; his passages are linked
together; he is not a writer of pages but of books; no logician is
more condensed.  His demonstration is knitted together, mesh by mesh,
for one, two and three volumes like a great net without an opening in
which, willingly or not, we remain caught.  He is a systematizer who,
absorbed with himself; and with his eyes stubbornly fixed on his own
reverie or his own principle, buries himself deeper in it every day,
weaving its consequences off one by one, and always holding fast to
the various ends.  Do not go near him.  Like a solitary, enraged
spider he weaves this out of his own substance, out of the most
cherished convictions of his brain and the deepest emotions of his
heart.  He trembles at the slightest touch; ever on the defensive, he
is terrible,[36] beside himself;[37] even venomous through suppressed
exasperation and wounded sensibility, furious against an adversary,
whom he stifles with the multiplied and tenacious threads of his web,
but still more redoubtable to himself than to his enemies, soon caught
in his own meshes,[38] believing that France and the universe conspire
against him, deducing with wonderful subtlety the proofs of this
chimerical conspiracy, made desperate, at last, by his over-plausible
romance, and strangling in the cunning toils which, by dint of his own
logic and imagination, he has fashioned for himself.

With such weapons one might accidentally kill oneself, but one is
strongly armed.  Rousseau was well equipped, at least as powerful as
Voltaire; it may be said that the last half of the eighteenth century
belongs to him.  A foreigner, a Protestant, original in temperament,
in education, in heart, in mind and in habits, at once misanthropic
and philanthropic, living in an ideal world constructed by himself,
entirely opposed to the world as it is, he finds himself standing in a
new position.  No one is so sensitive to the evils and vices of actual
society.  No one is so affected by the virtues and happiness of the
society of the future.  This accounts for his having two holds on the
public mind, one through satire and the other through the idyll.    -
These two holds are undoubtedly slighter at the present day; the
substance of their grasp has disappeared; we are not the auditors to
which it appealed.  The famous discourse on the influence of
literature and on the origin of inequality seems to us a collegiate
exaggeration; an effort of the will is required to read the " Nouvelle
Héloïse." The author is repulsive in the persistency of his
spitefulness or in the exaggeration of his enthusiasm.  He is always
in extremes, now moody and with knit brows, and now streaming with
tears and with arms outstretched to Heaven.  Hyperbole, prosopopaeia,
and other literary machinery are too often and too deliberately used
by him.  We are tempted to regard him now as a sophist making the best
use of his arts, now as a rhetorician cudgeling his brains for a
purpose, now as a preacher becoming excited, that is to say, an actor
ever maintaining a thesis, striking an attitude and aiming at effects.
Finally, with the exception of the "Confessions" his style soon
wearies us; it is too studied, and too constantly overstrained.  The
author is always the author, and he communicates the defect to his
personages.  His Julie argues and descants for twenty successive pages
on dueling, on love, on duty, with a logical completeness, a talent
and phrases that would do honor to an academical moralist.
Commonplace exists everywhere, general themes, a raking fire of
abstractions and arguments, that is to say, truths more or less empty
and paradoxes more or less hollow.  The smallest detail of fact, an
anecdote, a trait of habit, would suit us much better, and hence we of
to day prefer the precise eloquence of objects to the lax eloquence of
words.  In the eighteenth century it was otherwise; to every writer
this oratorical style was the prescribed ceremonial costume, the
dress-coat he had to put on for admission into the company of select
people.  That which seems to us affectation was then only proper; in a
classic epoch the perfect period and the sustained development
constitute decorum, and are therefore to be observed.    -  It must be
noted, moreover, that this literary drapery which, with us of the
present day, conceals truth did not conceal it to his contemporaries;
they saw under it the exact feature, the perceptible detail no longer
detected by us.  Every abuse, every vice, every excess of refinement
and of culture, all that social and moral disease which Rousseau
scourged with an author's emphasis, existed before them under their
own eyes, in their own breasts, visible and daily manifested in
thousands of domestic incidents.  In applying satire they had only to
observe or to remember.  Their experience completed the book, and,
through the co-operation of his readers, the author possessed power
which he is now deprived of.  If we were to put ourselves in their
place we should recover their impressions.  His denunciations and
sarcasms, the harsh things of all sorts he says of the great, of
fashionable people and of women, his rude and cutting tone, provoke
and irritate, but are not displeasing.  On the contrary, after so many
compliments, insipidities and petty versification all this quickens
the blunted taste; it is the sensation of strong common wine after
long indulgence in orgeat and preserved citron.  Accordingly, his
first discourse against art and literature "lifts one at once above
the clouds." But his idyllic writings touch the heart more powerfully
than his satires.  If men listen to the moralist that scolds them they
throng in the footsteps of the magician that charms them; especially
do women and the young adhere to one who shows them the promised land.
All accumulated dissatisfactions, weariness of the world, ennui, vague
disgust, a multitude of suppressed desires gush forth, like
subterranean waters, under the sounding line that for the first time
brings them to light.  Rousseau with his soundings struck deep and
true through his own trials and through genius.  In a wholly
artificial society where people are drawing room puppets, and where
life consists in a graceful parade according to a recognized model, he
preaches a return to nature, independence, earnestness, passion, and
effusion, a manly, active, ardent and happy existence in the open air
and in sunshine.  What an opening for restrained faculties, for the
broad and luxurious fountain ever bubbling in man's breast, and for
which their nice society provides no issue!  -  woman of the court is
familiar with love as then practiced, simply a preference, often only
a pastime, mere gallantry of which the exquisite polish poorly
conceals the shallowness, coldness and, occasionally, wickedness; in
short, adventures, amusements and personages as described by
Crébillion jr.  One evening, about to go out to the opera ball, she
finds the "Nouvelle Heloïse" on her toilet-table; it is not surprising
that she keeps her horses and footmen waiting from hour to hour, and
that at four o'clock in the morning she orders the horses to be
unharnessed, and then passes the rest of the night in reading, and
that she is stifled with her tears; for the first time in her life she
finds a man that loves[39].  In like manner if you would comprehend
the success of "Emile," call to mind the children we have described,
the embroidered, gilded, dressed-up, powdered little gentlemen, decked
with sword and sash, carrying the chapeau under the arm, bowing,
presenting the hand, rehearsing fine attitudes before a mirror,
repeating prepared compliments, pretty little puppets in which
everything is the work of the tailor, the hairdresser, the preceptor
and the dancing-master; alongside of these, little ladies of six
years, still more artificial, bound up in whalebone, harnessed in a
heavy skirt composed of hair and a girdle of iron, supporting a head-
dress two feet in height, so many veritable dolls to which rouge is
applied, and with which a mother amuses herself each morning for an
hour and then consigns them to her maids for the rest of the day[40].
This mother reads "Emile." It is not surprising that she immediately
strips the poor little thing, and determines to nurse her next child
herself.   -  It is through these contrasts that Rousseau is strong.
He revealed the dawn to people who never got up until noon, the
landscape to eyes that had thus far rested only on palaces and
drawing-rooms, a natural garden to men who had never promenaded
outside of clipped shrubs and rectilinear borders, the country, the
family, the people, simple and endearing pleasures, to townsmen made
weary by social avidity, by the excesses and complications of luxury,
by the uniform comedy which, in the glare of hundreds of lighted
candles, they played night after night in their own and in the homes
of others[41].  An audience thus disposed makes no clear distinction
between pomp and sincerity, between sentiment and sentimentality.
They follow their author as one who makes a revelation, as a prophet,
even to the end of his ideal world, much more through his
exaggerations than through his discoveries, as far on the road to
error as on the pathway of truth.

These are the great literary powers of the century.  With inferior
successes, and through various combinations, the elements which
contributed to the formation of the leading talents also form the
secondary talents, like those below Rousseau,  -  Bernardin de St.
Pierre, Raynal, Thomas, Marmontel, Mably, Florian, Dupaty, Mercier,
Madame de Staël; and below Voltaire,  -  the lively and piquant
intellects of Duclos, Piron, Galiani, President Des Brosses, Rivarol,
Champfort, and to speak with precision, all other talents.  Whenever a
vein of talent, however meager, peers forth above the ground it is for
the propagation and carrying forward of the new doctrine; scarcely can
we find two or three little streams that run in a contrary direction,
like the journal of Freron, a comedy by Palissot, or a satire by
Gilbert.  Philosophy winds through and overflows all channels public
and private, through manuals of impiety, like the "Théologies
portatives," and in the lascivious novels circulated secretly, through
epigrams and songs, through daily novelties, through the amusements of
fairs,[42] and the harangues of the Academy, through tragedy and the
opera, from the beginning to the end of the century, from the "OEdipe"
of Voltaire, to the "Tarare" of Beaumarchais.  It seems as if there
was nothing else in the world.  At least it is found everywhere and it
floods all literary efforts; nobody cares whether it deforms them,
content in making them serve as a conduit.  In 1763, in the tragedy of
Manco-Capac[43] the "principal part," writes a contemporary, "is that
of a savage who utters in verse all that we have read, scattered
through ' Emile' and the 'Contrat Social,' concerning kings, liberty,
the rights of man and the inequality of conditions." This virtuous
savage saves a king's son over whom a high-priest raises a poniard,
and then, designating the high-priest and himself by turns, he cries,

"Behold the civilized man; here is the savage man!"

At this line the applause breaks forth, and the success of the
piece is such that it is demanded at Versailles and played before the
court.

The same ideas have to be expressed with skill, brilliancy, gaiety,
energy and scandal, and this is accomplished in "The Marriage of
Figaro." Never were the ideals of the age displayed under a more
transparent disguise, nor in an attire that rendered them more
attractive.  Its title is the " Folle journee," and indeed it is an
evening of folly, an after-supper like those occurring in the
fashionable world, a masquerade of Frenchmen in Spanish costumes, with
a parade of dresses, changing scenes, couplets, a ballet, a singing
and dancing village, a medley of odd characters, gentlemen, servants,
duennas, judges, notaries, lawyers, music-masters, gardeners,
pastoureaux; in short, a spectacle for the eyes and the ears, for all
the senses, the very opposite of the prevailing drama in which three
pasteboard characters, seated on classic chairs, exchange didactic
arguments in an abstract saloon.  And still better, it is an imbroglio
displaying a superabundance of action, amidst intrigues that cross,
interrupt and renew each other, through a pêle-mêle of travesties,
exposures, surprises, mistakes, leaps from windows, quarrels and
slaps, and all in sparkling style, each phrase flashing on all sides,
where responses seem to be cut out by a lapidary, where the eyes would
forget themselves in contemplating the multiplied brilliants of the
dialogue if the mind were not carried along by its rapidity and the
excitement of the action.  But here is another charm, the most welcome
of all in a society passionately fond of Parny; according to an
expression of the Comte d'Artois, which I dare not quote, this appeals
to the senses, the arousing of which constitutes the spiciness and
savor of the piece.  The fruit that hangs ripening and savory on the
branch never falls but always seems on the point of falling; all hands
are extended to catch it, its voluptuousness somewhat veiled but so
much the more provoking, declaring itself from scene to scene, in the
Count's gallantry, in the Countess's agitation, in the simplicity of
Fanchette, in the jestings of Figaro, in the liberties of Susanne, and
reaching its climax in the precocity of Cherubino.  Add to this a
continual double sense, the author hidden behind his characters, truth
put into the mouth of a clown, malice enveloped in simple utterances,
the master duped but saved from being ridiculous by his deportment,
the valet rebellious but preserved from acrimony by his gaiety, and
you can comprehend how Beaumarchais could have the ancient regime
played before its head, put political and social satire on the stage,
publicly attach an expression to each wrong so as to become a by-word,
and ever making a loud report,[44] gather up into a few traits the
entire polemics of the philosophers against the prisons of the State,
against the censorship of literature, against the venality of office,
against the privileges of birth, against the arbitrary power of
ministers, against the incapacity of people in office, and still
better, to sum up in one character every public demand, give the
leading part to a commoner, bastard, bohemian and valet, who, by dint
of dexterity, courage and good-humor, keeps himself up, swims with the
tide, and shoots ahead in his little skiff, avoiding contact with
larger craft and even supplanting his master, accompanying each pull
on the oar with a shower of wit cast broadside at all his rivals.

After all, in France at least, the chief power is intellect.
Literature in the service of philosophy is all-sufficient.  The public
opposes but a feeble resistance to their complicity, the mistress
finding no trouble in convincing those who have already been won over
by the servant

___________________________________________________________

Notes:

[1] How right Taine was.  The 20th century should see a rebirth of
violent Jacobinism in Russia, China, Cambodia, Korea, Cuba, Germany,
Italy, Yugoslavia and Albania and of soft and creeping Jacobinism in
the entire Western world.  (SR.)

[2].  "Who, born within the last forty years, ever read a word of
Collins, and Toland, and Tindal, or of that whole race who called
themselves freethinkers?" (Burke, "Reflexions on the French
Revolutions," 1790).

[3].  The "Oedipe," by Voltaire, belongs to the year 1718, and his
"Lettres sur les Anglais," to the year 1728.  The "Lettres Persanes,"
by Montesquieu, published in 1721, contain the germs of all the
leading ideas of the century.

[4].  "Raison" (cult of).  Cult proposed by the Hébertists and
aimed at replacing Christianity under the French Revolution.  The Cult
of Reason was celebrated in the church of Notre Dame de Paris on the
10th of November 1793.  The cult disappeared with the Hébertists
(March 1794) and Robespierre replaced it with the cult of the Superior
Being.  (SR.)

[5].  Joseph de Maistre, Oeuvres inédites," pp.  8, 11.

[6].  Diderot's letters on the Blind and on the Deaf and Dumb are
addressed in whole or in part to women.

[7].  "Correspondence of Gouverneur Morris," (in English), II, 89.
(Letter of January 24, 1790)

[8].  John Andrews in "A comparative view," etc.  (1785).  - Arthur
Young, I.  123.  "I should pity the man who expected, without other
advantages of a very different nature, to be well received in a
brilliant circle in London, because he was a fellow of the Royal
Society.  But this would not be the case with a member of the Academy
of Sciences at Paris, he is sure of a good reception everywhere."

[9].  "I met in Paris the d'Alemberts, the Marmontels, the Baillys
at the houses of duchesses, which was an immense advantage to all
concerned.  .  .  .  When a man with us devotes himself to writing
books he is considered as renouncing the society equally of those who
govern as of those who laugh.  .  .  Taking literary vanity into
account the lives of your d'Alemberts and Baillys are as pleasant as
those of your seigniors." (Stendhal, "Rome, Naples et Florence," 377,
in a narrative by Col.  Forsyth).

[10].  "Entretien d'un philosophe avec la Maréchale -."

[11].  The television audience today cannot threaten never again to
invite the boring "philosopher" to dinner, but will zap away, a move
that the system accurately senses.  The rules that Taine describes
are, alas, therefore once more valid.  (SR.)

[12].  The same process is observable in our day in the "Sophismes
économiques" of Bastiat, the "Eloges historiques" of Flourens, and in
"Le Progrès," by Edmond About.

[13].  The "Portier de Chartreux." (An infamous pornographic book.
(SR.))

[14].  "Thérese Philosophe." There is a complete literature of this
species.

[15].  See the edition of M. Dauban in which the suppressed
passages are restored.

[16].  "Esprit des Lois," ch.  XV.  book V.  (Reasons in favor of
slavery).  The "Defence of the Esprit des Lois," I.  Reply to the
second objection.  II.  Reply to the fourth objection.

[17].  Letter 24 (on Louis XIV.)

[18].  Letter 18 (on the purity and impurity of things).  Letter 39
(proofs of the mission of Mohammed).

[19].  Letters 75 and 118.

[20].  Letters 98 (on the modern sciences), 46 (on a true system of
worship), 11 and 14 (on the nature of justice).

[21].  Cf "Micromégas," "L'homme aux quarantes écus," "Dialogues
entre A, B, C," Dic.  Philosophique," passim.   -  In verse, "Les
systèmes," "La loi naturelle," "Le pour et le countre,", "Discours sur
l'homme," etc.

[22].  "Traité de métaphysique," chap.  I.  p.1 (on the peasantry).
-  "Lettres sur les Anglais," passim.   -   "Candide," passim.   -
"La Princesse de Babylone," ch.  VII.  VIII.  IX.  and XI.

[23] "Dict.  Phil." articles, "Maladie," (Replies to the princess).
-  "Candide," at Madame de Parolignac.  The sailor in the wreck.
Narrative of Paquette.   -  The "Ingénu," the first chapters.

[24].  "Candide," the last chapter.  When there was no dispute
going on, it was so wearisome that the old woman one day boldly said
to him: "I should like to know which is worse to be ravished a hundred
times by Negro pirates, to have one's rump gashed, or be switched by
the Bulgarians, to be scourged or hung in an auto-da-fé, to be cut to
pieces, to row in the galleys, to suffer any misery through which we
have passed, or sit still and do nothing?" - "That is the great
question," said Candide.

[25].  For example, in the lines addressed to the Princess Ulrique
in the preface to "Alzire," dedicated to Madame du Chatelet:

      "Souvent un peu de verité," etc.

[26] The scholar in the dialogue of "Le Mais," (Jenny).   -  The
canonization of Saint Cucufin.   -  Advice to brother Pediculuso.   -
The diatribe of Doctor Akakia.    -  Conversation of the emperor of
China with brother Rigolo, etc.

[27].  "Dict.  Philosophique," the article "Ignorance."  -   "Les
Oreilles du Comte de Chesterfied."  -  "L'homme au quarante écus,"
chap.  VII.  and XI.

[28].  Bachaumont, III, 194.  (The death of the Comte de Maugiron).

[29].  "The novels of the younger Crébillon were in fashion.  My
father spoke with Madame de Puisieux on the ease with which licentious
works were composed; he contended that it was only necessary to find
an arousing idea as a peg to hang others on in which intellectual
libertinism should be a substitute for taste.  She challenged him to
produce on of this kind.  At the end of a fortnight he brought her
'Les bijoux indiscrets' and fifty louis." (Mémoires of Diderot, by his
daughter).   -   "La Religieuse," has a similar origin, its object
being to mystify M. de Croismart.

[30].  "Le Rêve de d'Alembert."

[31].  "Le neveau de Rameau."

[32].  The words of Diderot himself in relation to the "Rêve de
d'Alembert."

[33] One of the finest stanzas in "Souvenir" is almost literally
transcribed (involuntarily, I suppose), from the dialogue on Otaheite
(Tahiti).

[34].  "Nouvelle Héloise," passim., and notably Julie's
extraordinary letter, second part, number 15.  -  "Émile," the
preceptor's discourse to Émile and Sophie the morning after their
marriage.   -   Letter of the comtesse de Boufflers to Gustavus III.,
published by Geffroy, ("Gustave III.  et la cour de France").  "I
entrust to Baron de Lederheim, though with reluctance, a book for you
which has just been published, the infamous memoirs of Rousseau
entitled 'Confessions.' They seem to me those of a common scullion and
even lower than that, being dull throughout, whimsical and vicious in
the most offensive manner.  I do not recur to my worship of him (for
such it was) I shall never console myself for its having caused the
death of that eminent man David Hume, who, to gratify me, undertook to
entertain that filthy animal in England."

[35].  "Confessions," part I, book III.

[36].  Letter to M, de Beaumont.

[37].  "Émile," letter IV.  193.  "People of the world must
necessarily put on disguise; let them show themselves as they are and
they would horrify us," etc.

[38].  See, especially, his book entitled "Rousseau juge de Jean-
Jacques," his connection with Hume and the last books of the
"confessions."

[39].  "Confessions," part 2.  book XI.  "The women were
intoxicated with the book and with the author to such an extent that
there were few of them, even of high rank, whose conquest I could not
have made if I had undertaken it.  I possess evidence of this which I
do not care, to publish, and which, without having been obliged to
prove it by experience, warrant, my statement." Cf.  G.  Sand,
"Histoire de ma vie," I.73.

[40].  See an engraving by Moreau called "Les Petits Parrains." -
Berquin, passim., and among others "L'épée."  -   Remark the ready-
made phrases, the style of an author common to children, in Berquin
and Madame de Genlis.

[41].  See the description of sunrise in "Émile," of the Élysée (a
natural garden), in "Héloise." And especially in "Emile," at the end
of the fourth book, the pleasures which Rousseau would enjoy if he
were rich.

[42].  See in Marivaux, ("La double inconstance,") a satire on the
court, courtiers and the corruptions of high life, opposed to the
common people in the country.

[43] Bachmaumont, I.  254.

[44].  "A calculator was required for the place but a dancer got
it."  -   "The sale of offices is a great abuse." -"Yes, it would he
better to give them for nothing."  -  "Only small men fear small
literature."   -  "Chance makes the interval, the mind only can alter
that !"  -  "A courtier? - they say it is a very difficult
profession."  -  "To receive, to take, and to ask, is the secret in
three words," etc,  -  Also the entire monologue by Figaro, and all
the scenes with Bridoisin.






CHAPTER II.   THE FRENCH PUBLIC.

I.    THE NOBILITY.

The Aristocracy.   - Novelty commonly repugnant to it.   -
Conditions of this repugnance.   - Example in England.

  This public has yet to be made willing to be convinced and to be
won over; belief occurs only when there is a disposition to believe,
and, in the success of books, its share is often greater than that of
their authors.   On addressing men about politics or religion their
opinions are, in general already formed; their prejudices, their
interests, their situation have confirmed them beforehand; they listen
to you only after you have uttered aloud what they inwardly think.
Propose to them to demolish the great social edifice and to rebuild it
anew on a quite an opposite plan: ordinarily you auditors will consist
only of those who are poorly lodged or shelterless, who live in
garrets or cellars, or who sleep under the stars, on the bare ground
in the vicinity of houses.   The common run of people, whose lodgings
are small but tolerable, dread moving and adhere to their accustomed
ways.   The difficulty becomes much greater on appealing to the upper
classes who occupy superior habitations; their acceptance of your
proposal depends either on their great delusions or on their great
disinterestedness.   In England they quickly foresee the danger.

In vain is philosophy there indigenous and precocious; it does not
become acclimatized.   In 1729, Montesquieu writes in his memorandum-
book: "No religion in England; four or five members of the House of
Commons attend mass or preaching in the House.   .   .   .   When
religion is mentioned everybody begins to laugh.   A man having said:
I believe that as an article of faith, everybody laughed.   A
committee is appointed to consider the state of religion, but it is
regarded as absurd." Fifty years later the public mind undergoes a
reaction; all with a good roof over their heads and a good coat on
their backs[1] see the consequence of the new doctrines.   In any
event they feel that closet speculations are not to become street
preaching.   Impiety seems to them an indiscretion; they consider
religion as the cement of public order.   This is owing to the fact
that they are themselves public men, engaged in active life, taking a
part in the government, and instructed through their daily and
personal experience.   Practical life fortifies them against the
chimeras of theorists; they have proved to themselves how difficult it
is to lead and to control men.   Having had their hand on the machine
they know how it works, its value, its cost, and they are not tempted
to cast it aside as rubbish to try another, said to be superior, but
which, as yet, exists only on paper.   The baronet, or squire, a
justice on his own domain, has no trouble in discerning in the
clergyman of his parish an indispensable co-worker and a natural ally.
The duke or marquis, sitting in the upper house by the side of
bishops, requires their votes to pass bills, and their assistance to
rally to his party the fifteen hundred curates who influence the rural
conscience.   Thus all have a hand on some social wheel, large or
small, principal or accessory, and this endows them with earnestness,
foresight and good sense.   On coming in contact with realities there
is no temptation to soar away into the imaginary world; the fact of
one being at work on solid ground of itself makes one dislike aerial
excursions in empty space.   The more occupied one is the less one
dreams, and, to men of business, the geometry of the " Contrat Social'
is merely intellectual gymnastics.



II.    CONDITIONS IN FRANCE.

The opposite conditions found in France.   - Indolence of the upper
class.   - Philosophy seems an intellectual drill.   - Besides this, a
subject for conversation.   - Philosophic conversation in the 18th
century.   - Its superiority and its charm.   - The influence it
exercises.

It is quite the reverse in France.   "I arrived there in 1774,"[2]
says an English gentleman, "having just left the house of my father,
who never came home from Parliament until three o'clock in the
morning, and who was busy the whole morning correcting the proofs of
his speech for the newspapers, and who, after hastily kissing us, with
an absorbed air, went out to a political dinner.   .   .   .   In
France I found men of the highest rank enjoying perfect leisure.
They had interviews with the ministers but only to exchange
compliments; in other respects they knew as little about the public
affairs of France as they did about those of Japan; and less of local
affairs than of general affairs, having no knowledge of their
peasantry other than that derived from the accounts of their stewards.
If one of them, bearing the title of governor, visited a province, it
was, as we have seen, for outward parade; whilst the intendant carried
on the administration, he exhibited himself with grace and
magnificence by giving receptions and dinners.   To receive, to give
dinners, to entertain guests agreeably is the sole occupation of a
grand seignior; hence it is that religion and government only serve
him as subjects of conversation.   The conversation, moreover, occurs
between him and his equals, and a man may say what he pleases in good
company.   Moreover the social system turns on its own axis, like the
sun, from time immemorial, through its own energy, and shall it be
deranged by what is said in the drawing-room? In any event he does not
control its motion and he is not responsible.   Accordingly there is
no uneasy undercurrent, no morose preoccupation in his mind.
Carelessly and boldly he follows in the track of his philosophers;
detached from affairs he can give himself up to ideas, just as a young
man of family, on leaving college, lays hold of some principle,
deduces its consequences, and forms a system for himself without
concerning himself about its application[3].

Nothing is more enjoyable than this speculative inspiration.   The
mind soars among the summits as if it had wings; it embraces vast
horizons in a glance, taking in all of human life, the economy of the
world, the origin of the universe, of religions and of societies.
Where, accordingly, would conversation be if people abstained from
philosophy? What circle is that in which serious political problems
and profound criticism are not admitted? And what motive brings
intellectual people together if not the desire to debate questions of
the highest importance?  -  For two centuries in France the
conversation has been related to all that, and hence its great charm.
Strangers find it irresistible; nothing like it is found at home; Lord
Chesterfield sets it forth as an example:

"It always turns, he says, on some point in history, on criticism
or even philosophy which is much better suited to rational beings than
our English discussions about the weather and whist."

Rousseau, so querulous, admits "that a moral subject could not be
better discussed in a society of philosophers than in that of a pretty
woman in Paris." Undoubtedly there is a good deal of idle talk, but
with all the chattering "let a man of any authority make a serious
remark or start a grave subject and the attention is immediately fixed
on this point; men and women, the old and the young, all give
themselves up to its consideration on all its sides, and it is
surprising what an amount of reason and good sense issues, as if in
emulation, from these frolicsome brains." The truth is that, in this
constant holiday which this brilliant society gives itself philosophy
is the principal amusement.   Without philosophy the ordinary ironical
chit-chat would be vapid.   It is a sort of superior opera in which
every grand conception that can interest a reflecting mind passes
before it, now in comic and now in sober attire, and each in conflict
with the other.   The tragedy of the day scarcely differs from it
except in this respect, that it always bears a solemn aspect and is
performed only in the theaters; the other assumes all sorts of
physiognomies and is found everywhere because conversation is
everywhere carried on.   Not a dinner nor a supper is given at which
it does not find place.   One sits at a table amidst refined luxury,
among agreeable and well-dressed women and pleasant and well-informed
men, a select company, in which comprehension is prompt and the
company trustworthy.   After the second course the inspiration breaks
out in the liveliest sallies, all minds flashing and scintillating.
When the dessert comes on what is to prevent the gravest of subjects
from being put into witticisms? On the appearance of the coffee
questions on the immortality of the soul and on the existence of God
come up.

To form any idea of this attractive and bold conversation we must
consult the correspondence of the day, the short treatises and
dialogues of Diderot and Voltaire, whatever is most animated, most
delicate, most piquant and most profound in the literature of the
century; and yet this is only a residuum, a lifeless fragment.   The
whole of this written philosophy was uttered in words, with the
accent, the impetuosity, the inimitable naturalness of improvisation,
with the versatility of malice and of enthusiasm.   Even to day,
chilled and on paper, it still excites and seduces us.   What must it
have been then when it gushed forth alive and vibrant from the lips of
Voltaire and Diderot? Daily, in Paris, suppers took place like those
described by Voltaire,[4] .at which "two philosophers, three clever
intellectual ladies,M. Pinto the famous Jew, the chaplain of the
Batavian ambassador of the reformed church, the secretary of the
Prince de Galitzin of the Greek church, and a Swiss Calvinist
captain," seated around the same table, for four hours interchanged
their anecdotes, their flashes of wit, their remarks and their
decisions "on all subjects of interest relating to science and taste."
The most learned and distinguished foreigners daily visited, in turn,
the house of the Baron d'Holbach,  -  Hume, Wilkes, Sterne, Beccaria,
Veri, the Abbé Galiani, Garrick, Franklin, Priestley, Lord Shelburne,
the Comte de Creutz, the Prince of Brunswick and the future Elector of
Mayence.   With respect to society in general the Baron entertained
Diderot, Rousseau, Helvétius, Duclos, Saurin, Raynal, Suard,
Marmontel, Boulanger, the Chevalier de Chastellux, the traveler La
Condamine, the physician Barthèz, and Rouelle, the chemist.   Twice a
week, on Sundays and Thursdays, "without prejudice to other days,"
they dine at his house, according to custom, at two o'clock; a
significant custom which thus leaves to conversation and gaiety a
man's best powers and the best hours of the day.   Conversation, in
those days, was not relegated to night and late hours; a man was not
forced, as at the present day, to subordinate it to the exigencies of
work and money, of the Assembly and the Exchange.   Talking is the
main business.   "Entering at two o'clock," says Morellet,[5] "we
almost all remained until seven or eight o'clock in the evening.   .
.   .   Here could be heard the most liberal, the most animated, the
most instructive conversation that ever took place.   .   .   .
There was no political or religious temerity which was not brought
forward and discussed pro and con.   .   .   .   Frequently some one
of the company would begin to speak and state his theory in full,
without interruption.   At other times it would be a combat of one
against one, of which the rest remained silent spectators.   Here I
heard Roux and Darcet expose their theory of the earth, Marmontel the
admirable principles he collected together in his 'Elements de La
Littérature,' Raynal, telling us in livres, sous and deniers, the
commerce of the Spaniards with Vera-Crux and of the English with their
colonies." Diderot improvises on the arts and on moral and
metaphysical subjects, with that incomparable fervor and wealth of
expression, that flood of logic and of illustration, those happy hits
of style and that mimetic power which belonged to him alone, and of
which but two or three of his works preserve even the feeblest image.
In their midst Galiani, secretary of the Neapolitan Embassy, a clever
dwarf; a genius, "a sort of Plato or Machiavelli with the spirit and
action of a harlequin," inexhaustible in stories, an admirable
buffoon, and an accomplished skeptic, "having no faith in anything, on
anything or about anything,"[6] not even in the new philosophy, braves
the atheists of the drawing-room, beats down their dithyrambs with
puns, and, with his perruque in his hand, sitting cross-legged on the
chair on which he is perched, proves to them in a comic apologia that
they raisonnent (reason) or résonnent (resound or echo) if not as
cruches (blockheads) at least as cloches (bells);" in any event almost
as poorly as theologians.   One of those present says, "It was the
most diverting thing possible and worth the best of plays."

How can the nobles, who pass their lives in talking, refrain from
the society of people who talk so well? They might as well expect
their wives, who frequent the theater every night, and who perform at
home, not to attract famous actors and singers to their receptions,
Jelyotte, Sainval, Préville, and young Molé who, quite ill and needing
restoratives, "receives in one day more than 2,000 bottles of wine of
different sorts from the ladies of the court," Mlle.   Clairon, who,
consigned to prison in Fort l'Eveque, attracts to it "an immense crowd
of carriages," presiding over the most select company in the best
apartment of the prison[7].   With life thus regarded, a philosopher
with his ideas is as necessary in a drawing room as a chandelier with
its lights.   He forms a part of the new system of luxury.   He is an
article of export.   Sovereigns, amidst their splendor, and at the
height of their success, invite them to their courts to enjoy for once
in their life the pleasure of perfect and free discourse.   When
Voltaire arrives in Prussia Frederic II.   is willing to kiss his
hand, fawning on him as on a mistress, and, at a later period, after
such mutual fondling, he cannot dispense with carrying on
conversations with him by letter.   Catherine II.   sends for Diderot,
and, for two or three hours every day, she plays with him the great
game of the intellect.   Gustavus III., in France, is intimate with
Marmontel, and considers a visit from Rousseau as the highest
honor[8].   It is said with truth of Voltaire that "he holds the four
kings in his hand," those of Prussia, Sweden, Denmark and Russia,
without mentioning lower cards, the princes, princesses, grand dukes
and markgraves.   The principal rôle in this society evidently belongs
to authors; their ways and doings form the subject of gossip; people
never weary of paying them homage.   Here, writes Hume to
Robertson,[9] "I feed on ambrosia, drink nothing but nectar, breathe
incense only and walk on flowers.   Every man I meet, and especially
every woman, would consider themselves as failing in the most
indispensable duty if they did not favor me with a lengthy and
ingenious discourse on my celebrity." Presented at court, the future
Louis XVI, aged ten years, the future Louis XVIII, aged eight years,
and the future Charles X, aged four years, each recites a compliment
to him on his works.   I need not narrate the return of Voltaire, his
triumphant entry,
[10] the Academy in a body coming to welcome him, his
carriage stopped by the crowd, the thronged streets, the windows,
steps and balconies filled with admirers, an intoxicated audience in
the theater incessantly applauding, outside an entire population
carrying him off with huzzahs, in the drawing-rooms a continual
concourse equal to that of the king, grand seigniors pressed against
the door with outstretched ears to catch a word, and great ladies
standing on tiptoe to observe the slightest gesture.   "To form any
conception of what I experienced," says one of those present, "one
should breathe the atmosphere of enthusiasm I lived in.   I spoke with
him." This expression at that time converted any new-comer into an
important character.   He had, in fact, seen the wonderful orchestra-
leader who, for more than fifty years, conducted the tumultuous
concert of serious or court-vêtues ideas, and who, always on the
stage, always chief, the recognized leader of universal conversation,
supplied the motives, gave the pitch, marked the measure, stamped the
inspiration, and drew the first note on the violin.



III.   FRENCH INDOLENCE.

Further effects of indolence.   - The skeptical, licentious and
seditious spirit.   - Previous resentment and fresh discontent at the
established order of things.   - Sympathy for the theories against it.
- How far accepted.

Listen to the shouts that greet him: Hurrah for the author of the
Henriade! the defender of Calas, the author of La Pucelle! Nobody of
the present day would utter the first, nor especially the last hurrah.
This indicates the tendency of the century; not only were writers
called upon for ideas, but again for antagonistic ideas.   To render
an aristocracy inactive is to render it rebellious; people are more
willing to submit to rules they have themselves helped to enforce.
Would you rally them to the support of the government? Then let them
take part in it.   If not they stand by as an onlooker and see nothing
but the mistakes it commits, feeling only its irritations, and
disposed only to criticize and to hoot at it.   In fact, in this case,
they are as if in the theater, where they go to be amused, and,
especially, not to be put to any inconvenience.   What inconveniences
in the established order of things, and indeed in any established
order!   -  In the first place, religion.   To the amiable "idlers"
whom Voltaire describes,[11] to "the 100,000 persons with nothing to
do but to play and to amuse themselves," religion is the most
disagreeable of pedagogues, always scolding, hostile to sensible
amusement and free discussion, burning books which one wants to read,
and imposing dogmas that are no longer comprehensible.   In plain
terms religion is an eyesore, and whoever wishes to throw stones at
her is welcome.     --   There is another bond, the moral law of the
sexes.   It seems onerous to men of pleasure, to the companions of
Richelieu, Lauzun and Tilly, to the heroes of Crebillon the younger,
and all others belonging to that libertine and gallant society for
whom license has become the rule.   Our fine gentlemen are quite ready
to adopt a theory which justifies their practices.[12] They are very
glad to be told that marriage is conventional and a thing of
prejudice.   Saint- Lambert obtains their applause at supper when,
raising a glass of champagne, he proposes as a toast a return to
nature and the customs of Tahiti[13].    The last fetter of all is the
government, the most galling, for it enforces the rest and keeps man
down with its weight, along with the added weight of the others.   It
is absolute, it is centralized, it works through favorites, it is
backward, it makes mistakes, it has reverses: how many causes of
discontent embraced in a few words! It is opposed by the vague and
suppressed resentment of the former powers which it has dispossessed,
the provincial assemblies, the parliaments, the grandees of the
provinces, the old stock of nobles, who, like the Mirabeau, retain the
old feudal spirit, and like Châteaubriand's father, call the Abbé
Raynal a "master-man." Against it is the spite of all those who
imagine themselves frustrated in the distribution of offices and of
favors, not only the provincial nobility who remain outside[14] while
the court nobility are feasting at the royal banquet, but again the
majority of the courtiers who are obliged to be content with crumbs,
while the little circle of intimate favorites swallow down the large
morsels.   It has against it the ill-humor of those under its
direction who, seeing it play the part of Providence and providing for
all, accuses it of everything, the high price of bread as well as of
the decay of a highway.   It has against it the new humanity which, in
the most elegant drawing-rooms, lays to its charge the maintenance of
the antiquated remains of a barbarous epoch, ill-imposed, ill-
apportioned and ill-collected taxes, sanguinary laws, blind
prosecutions, atrocious punishments, the persecution of the
Protestants, lettres-de-cachet, and prisons of State.   And I do not
include its excesses, its scandals, its disasters and its disgraces,
-  Rosbach, the treaty of Paris, Madame du Barry, and bankruptcy.    -
Disgust intervenes, for everything is decidedly bad.   The spectators
of the play say to each other that not only is the piece itself poor,
but the theater is badly built, uncomfortable, stifling and
contracted, to such a degree that, to be at one's ease, the whole
thing must be torn down and rebuilt from cellar to garret.

Just at this moment the new architects appear, with their specious
arguments and their ready-made plans, proving that every great public
structure, religious and moral, and all communities, cannot be
otherwise than barbarous and unhealthy, since, thus far, they are
built up out of bits and pieces, by degrees, and generally by fools
and savages, in any event by common masons, who built aimlessly,
feeling their way and devoid of principles.   As far as they are
concerned, they are genuine architects, and they have principles, that
is to say, Reason, Nature, and the Rights of Man, straightforward and
fruitful principles which everybody can understand, all that has to be
done is to draw their consequences making it possible to replace the
imperfect tenements of the past with the admirable edifice of the
future.    -  To irreverent, Epicurean and philanthropic malcontents
the temptation is a great one.   They readily adopt maxims which seem
in conformity with their secret wishes; at least they adopt them in
theory and in words.   The imposing terms of liberty, justice, public
good, man's dignity, are so admirable, and besides so vague! What
heart can refuse to cherish them, and what intelligence can foretell
their innumerable applications? And all the more because, up to the
last, the theory does not descend from the heights, being confined to
abstractions, resembling an academic oration, constantly dealing with
Natural Man (homme en soi) of the social contract, with an imaginary
and perfect society.   Is there a courtier at Versailles who would
refuse to proclaim equality in the lands of the Franks!  -  Between
the two stories of the human intellect, the upper where abstract
reasoning is spun and the lower where an active faith reposes,
communication is neither complete nor immediate.    A number of
principles never leave the upper stories; they remain there as
curiosities, so many fragile, clever mechanisms, freely to be seen but
rarely employed.   If the proprietor sometimes transfers them to the
lower story he makes but a partial use of them; established customs,
anterior and more powerful interests and instincts restrict their
employment.   In this respect he is not acting in bad faith, but as a
man; each of us professing truths which he does not put in practice.
One evening Target, a dull lawyer, having taken a pinch from the
snuff-box of the Maréchale de Beauvau, the latter, whose drawing room
is a small democratic club, is amazed at such monstrous familiarity.
Later, Mirabeau, on returning home just after having voted for the
abolition of the titles of nobility, takes his servant by the ear,
laughingly proclaiming in his thunderous voice, "Look here, you
rascal, I trust that to you I shall always be Monsieur le Comte !"   -
This shows to what extent new theories are admitted into an
aristocratic brain.   They occupy the whole of the upper story, and
there, with a pleasing murmur, they weave the web of interminable
conversation; their buzzing lasts throughout the century; never have
the drawing-rooms seen such an outpouring of fine sentences and of
fine words.   Something of all this drops from the upper to the lower
story, if only as dust, I mean to say, hope, faith in the future,
belief in Reason, a love of truth, the generous and youthful good
intentions, the enthusiasm that quickly passes but which may, for a
while, become self-abnegation and devotion.



IV.   UNBELIEF.

The diffusion among the upper class.   - Progress of incredulity in
religion.   - Its causes.- It breaks out under the Regency.   -
Increasing irritation against the clergy.   - Materialism in the
drawing-room.   - Estimate of the sciences.   - Final opinion on
religion.   - Skepticism of the higher clergy.

Let us follow the progress of philosophy in the upper class.
Religion is the first to receive the severest attacks.   The small
group of skeptics, which is hardly perceptible under Louis XIV, has
obtained its recruits in the dark; in 1698 the Palatine, the mother of
the Regent, writes that "we scarcely meet a young man now who is not
ambitious of being an atheist."[15]  Under the Regency, unbelief comes
out into open daylight.   "I doubt," says this lady again, in 1722,
"if; in all Paris, a hundred individuals can be found, either
ecclesiastics or laymen, who have any true faith, or even believe in
our Lord.   It makes one tremble.   .   .   ." The position of an
ecclesiastic in society is already difficult.   He is looked upon,
apparently, as either a puppet or a dickey (a false shirt front)[16].
"The moment we appear," says one of them, "we are forced into
discussion; we are called upon to prove, for example, the utility of
prayer to an unbeliever in God, and the necessity of fasting to a man
who has all his life denied the immortality of the soul; the effort is
very irksome, while those who laugh are not on our side." It is not
long before the continued scandal of confession tickets and the
stubbornness of the bishops in not allowing ecclesiastical property to
be taxed, excites opinion against the clergy, and, as a matter of
course, against religion itself.   "There is danger," says Barbier in
1751, "that this may end seriously; we may some day see a revolution
in this country in favor of Protestantism."[17]   "The hatred against
the priests," writes d'Argenson in 1753, "is carried to extremes.
They scarcely show themselves in the streets without being hooted at.
.   .   .As our nation and our century are quite otherwise enlightened
(than in the time of Luther), it will be carried far enough; they will
expel the priests, abolish the priesthood and get rid of all
revelation and all mystery.   .   .   .   One dare not speak in behalf
of the clergy in social circles; one is scoffed at and regarded as a
familiar of the inquisition.   The priests remark that, this year,
there is a diminution of more than one-third in the number of
communicants.   The College of the Jesuits is being deserted; one
hundred and twenty boarders have been withdrawn from these so greatly
defamed monks.   It has been observed also that, during the carnival
in Paris, the number of masks counterfeiting ecclesiastical dress,
bishops, abbés, monks and nuns, was never so great."   -  So deep is
this antipathy, the most mediocre books become the rage so long as
they are anti-Christian and condemned as such.   In 1748 a work by
Toussaint called "Les Moeurs," in favor of natural religion, suddenly
becomes so famous, "that there is no one among a certain class of
people," writes Barbier, "man or woman, pretending to be intellectual,
who is not eager to read it." People accost each other on their
promenades, Have you read "Les Moeurs"?  -   Ten years later they are
beyond deism.    "Materialism," Barbier further said, "is the great
grievance.   .   .   .   " "Almost all people of erudition and taste,
writes d'Argenson, "inveigh against our holy religion.   .   .   .
It is attacked on all sides, and what animates unbelievers still more
is the efforts made by the devout to compel belief.   They publish
books which are but little read; debates no longer take place,
everything being laughed at, while people persist in materialism."
Horace Walpole, who returns to France in 1765,[18] and whose good
sense anticipates the danger, is astonished at such imprudence: "I
dined to day with a dozen scholars and scientists, and although all
the servants were around us and listening, the conversation was much
more unrestrained, even on the Old Testament, than I would allow at my
own table in England even if a single footman was present." People
dogmatize everywhere.   "Joking is as much out of fashion as jumping
jacks and tumblers.   Our good folks have no time to laugh! There is
God and the king to be hauled down first; and men and women, one and
all, are devoutly employed in the demolition.   They think me quite
profane for having any belief left.   .   .   .   Do you know who the
philosophers are, or what the term means here? In the first place it
comprehends almost everybody; and in the next, means men, who, avowing
war against popery, take aim, many of them, at a subversion of all
religion.   .   .   .   These savants,  -  I beg their pardons, these
philosophers  -  are insupportable, superficial, overbearing and
fanatic: they preach incessantly, and their avowed doctrine is
atheism; you would not believe how openly.   Voltaire himself does not
satisfy them.   One of their lady devotees said of him, 'He is a
bigot, a deist!' "

This is very strong, and yet we have not come to the end of it;
for, thus far, impiety is less a conviction than the fashion.
Walpole, a careful observer, is not deluded by it.   "By what I have
said of their religious or rather irreligious opinions, you must not
conclude their people of quality atheists  -  at least not the men.
Happily for them, poor souls! they are not capable of going so far
into thinking.   They assent to a great deal because it is the
fashion, and because they don't know how to contradict." Now that
"dandies are outmoded" and everybody is "a philosopher,"  "they are
philosophers." It is essential to be like all the rest of the world.
But that which they best appreciate in the new materialism is the
pungency of paradox and the freedom given to pleasure.   They are like
the boys of good families, fond of playing tricks on their
ecclesiastical preceptor.   They take out of learned theories just
what is wanted to make a dunce-cap, and derive the more amusement from
the fun if it is seasoned with impiety.   A seignior of the court
having seen Doyen's picture of "St.   Genevieve and the plague-
stricken," sends to a painter the following day to come to him at his
mistress's domicile: "I would like," he says to him, "to have Madame
painted in a swing put in motion by a bishop; you may place me in such
a way that I may see the ankles of that handsome woman, and even more,
if you want to enliven your picture."[19]  The licentious song
"Marotte" "spreads like wildfire; " "a fortnight after its
publication," says Collé, "I met no one without a copy; and it is the
vaudeville, or rather, the clerical assembly, which gives it its
popularity." The more irreligious a licentious book is the more it is
prized; when it cannot be printed it is copied in manuscript.   Collé
counts "perhaps two thousand manuscript copies of' La Pucelle 'by
Voltaire, scattered about Paris in one month." The magistrates
themselves burn it only for form's sake.   "It must not be supposed
that the hangman is allowed to burn the books whose titles figure in
the decree of the Court.   Messieurs would be loath to deprive their
libraries of the copy of those works which fall to them by right, and
make the registrar supply its place with a few poor records of
chicanery of which there is no scanty provision."[20]

But, as the century advances, unbelief, less noisy, becomes more
solid.   It invigorates itself at the fountain-head; the women
themselves begin to be infatuated with the sciences.   In 1782,[21]
one of Mme.   de Genlis's characters writes,

Five years ago I left them thinking only of their attire and the
preparation of their suppers; I now find them all scientific and
witty." We find in the study of a fashionable woman, alongside of a
small altar dedicated to Benevolence or Friendship, a dictionary of
natural history and treatises on physics and chemistry.   A woman no
longer has herself painted as a goddess on a cloud but in a
laboratory, seated amidst squares and telescopes[22].   The Marquise
de Nesle, the Comtesse de Brancas, the Comtesse de Pons, the Marquise
de Polignac, are with Rouelle when he undertakes to melt and
volatilize the diamond.   Associations of twenty or twenty-five
persons are formed in the drawing-rooms to attend lectures either on
physics, applied chemistry, mineralogy or on botany.   Fashionable
women at the public meetings of the Academy of Inscriptions applaud
dissertations on the bull Apis, and reports on the Egyptian,
Phoenician and Greek languages.   Finally, in 1786, they succeed in
opening the doors of the College de France.   Nothing deters them.
Many of them use the lancet and even the scalpel; the Marquise de
Voyer attends at dissections, and the young Comtesse de Coigny
dissects with her own hands.   The current infidelity finds fresh
support on this foundation, which is that of the prevailing
philosophy.   Towards the end of the century[23] "we see young persons
who have been in society six or seven years openly pluming themselves
on their irreligion, thinking that impiety makes up for wit, and that
to be an atheist is to be a philosopher." There are, undoubtedly, a
good many deists, especially after Rousseau appeared, but I question
whether, out of a hundred persons, there were in Paris at this time
ten Christian men or women.   "The fashionable world for ten years
past," says Mercier[24] in 1783, "has not attended mass.   People go
only on Sundays so as not to scandalize their lackeys, while the
lackeys well know that it is on their account." The Duc de Coigny,[25]
on his estate near Amiens, refuses to be prayed for and threatens his
curate if he takes that liberty to have him cast out of his pulpit;
his son becomes ill and he prohibits the administering of the
sacraments; the son dies and he opposes the usual obsequies, burying
the body in his garden; becoming ill himself he closes his door
against the bishop of Amiens, who comes to see him twelve times, and
dies as he had lived.   A scandal of this kind is doubtless notorious
and, therefore, rare.   Almost everybody, male and female, "ally with
freedom of ideas a proper observance of forms."[26]  When a maid
appears and says to her mistress, "Madame la Duchesse, the Host (le
bon Dieu) is outside, will you allow him to enter? He desires to have
the honor of administering to you," appearances are kept up.   The
troublesome individual is admitted and he is politely received.   If
they slip away from him it is under a decent pretext; but if he is
humored it is only out of a sense of decorum.   "At Sura when a man
dies, he holds a cow's tail in his hand." Society was never more
detached from Christianity.   In its eyes a positive religion is only
a popular superstition, good enough for children and innocents but not
for "sensible people" and the great.   It is your duty to raise your
hat to the Host as it passes, but your duty is only to raise your hat.

The last and gravest sign of all! If the curates who work and who
are of the people hold the people's ideas, the prelates who talk, and
who are of society hold the opinions of society.   And I do not allude
merely to the abbés of the drawing-room, the domestic courtiers,
bearers of news, and writers of light verse, those who fawn in
boudoirs, and who, when in company, answer like an echo, and who,
between one drawing room and another, serve as megaphone; an echo, a
megaphone only repeats the phrase, whether skeptical or not, with
which it is charged.   I refer to the dignitaries, and, on this point,
the witnesses all concur.   In the month of August, 1767, the Abbé
Bassinet, grand vicar of Cahors, on pronouncing the panegyric of St.
Louis in the Louvre chapel,[27] "suppressed the sign of the cross,
making no quotation from Scripture and never uttering a word about
Christ and the Saints.   He considered Louis IX merely on the side of
his political, moral and military virtues.   He animadverted on the
Crusades, setting forth their absurdity, cruelty and even injustice.
He struck openly and without caution at the see of Rome." Others
"avoid the name of Christ in the pulpit and merely allude to him as a
Christian legislator."[28] In the code which the prevailing opinions
and social decency impose on the clergy a delicate observer[29] thus
specifies distinctions in rank with their proper shades of behavior:
"A plain priest, a curate, must have a little faith, otherwise he
would be found a hypocrite; at the same time, he must not be too well
satisfied, for he would be found intolerant.   On the contrary, the
grand vicar may smile at an expression against religion, the bishop
may laugh outright, and the cardinal may add something of his own to
it." "A little while ago," a chronicle narrates, "some one put this
question to one of the most respectable curates in Paris: Do you think
that the bishops who insist so strenuously on religion have much of it
themselves? The worthy pastor replied, after a moment's hesitation:
There may be four or five among them who still believe." To one who is
familiar with their birth, their social relations, their habits and
their tastes, this does not appear at all improbable.   "Dom
Collignon, a representative of the abbey of Mettach, seignior high-
justiciary and curate of Valmunster," a fine-looking man, fine talker,
and an agreeable housekeeper, avoids scandal by having his two
mistresses at his table only with a select few; he is in other
respects as little devout as possible, and much less so than the
Savoyard vicar, "finding evil only in injustice and in a lack of
charity," and considering religion merely as a political institution
and for moral ends.   I might cite many others, like M. de Grimaldi,
the young and gallant bishop of Le Mans, who selects young and gallant
comrades of his own station for his grand vicars, and who has a
rendezvous for pretty women at his country seat at Coulans[30].
Judge of their faith by their habits.   In other cases we have no
difficulty in determining.   Scepticism is notorious with the Cardinal
de Rohan, withM. de Brienne, archbishop of Sens, withM. de Talleyrand,
bishop of Autun, and with the Abbé Maury, defender of the clergy.
Rivarol,[31] himself a skeptic, declares that at the approach of the
Revolution, "the enlightenment of the clergy equaled that of the
philosophers." "Who would believe it, but body with the fewest
prejudices," says Mercier,[32] "is the clergy." And the Archbishop of
Narbonne, explaining the resistance of the upper class of the clergy
in I791[33] attributes it, not to faith but to a point of honor.   "We
conducted ourselves at that time like true gentlemen, for, with most
of us, it could not be said that it was through religious feeling."



V.    POLITICAL OPPOSITION.

Progress of political opposition.   - Its origin.   - The
economists and the parliamentarians.   - They prepare the way for the
philosophers.   - Political fault-finding in the drawing-rooms.   -
Female liberalism.

The distance between the altar and the throne is a short one,    and
yet it requires thirty years for opinion to overcome it.   No
political or social attacks are yet made during the first half of the
century.   The irony of the "Lettres Persanes"is as cautious as it is
delicate, and the " Esprit des Lois" is conservative.   As to the Abbé
de Saint-Pierre his reveries provoke a smile, and when he undertakes
to censure Louis XIV the Academy strikes him off its list.   At last,
the economists on one side and the parliamentarians on the other, give
the signal.     -  Voltaire says[34] that "about 1750 the nation,
satiated with verse, tragedies, comedies, novels, operas, romantic
histories, and still more romantic moralizings, and with disputes
about grace and convulsions, began to discuss the question of corn."
What makes bread dear? Why is the laborer so miserable? What
constitutes the material and limits of taxation? Ought not all land to
pay taxes, and should one piece pay more than its net product? These
are the questions that find their way into drawing-rooms under the
king's auspices, by means of Quesnay, his physician, "his thinker,"
the founder of a system which aggrandizes the sovereign to relieve the
people, and which multiplies the number of tax-payers to lighten the
burden of taxation.    -  At the same time, through the opposite door,
other questions enter, not less novel.   "Is France[35] a mild and
representative monarchy or a government of the Turkish stamp? Are we
subject to the will of an absolute master, or are we governed by a
limited and regulated power? .   .   .   The exiled parliaments are
studying public rights at their sources and conferring together on
these as in the academies.   Through their researches, the opinion is
gaining ground in the public mind that the nation is above the king,
as the universal church is above the pope."   -  The change is
striking and almost immediate.   "Fifty years ago," says d'Argenson,
again, "the public showed no curiosity concerning matters of the
State.   Today everybody reads his Gazette de Paris, even in the
provinces.   People reason at random on political subjects, but
nevertheless they occupy themselves with them."  -   Conversation
having once provided itself with this diet holds fast to it, the
drawing-rooms, accordingly, opening their doors to political
philosophy, and, consequently, to the Social Contract, to the
Encyclopedia, to the preachings of Rousseau, Mably, d'Holbach, Raynal,
and Diderot.   In 1759, d'Argenson, who becomes excited, already
thinks the last hour has come.   "We feel the breath of a
philosophical anti-monarchical, free government wind; the idea is
current, and possibly this form of government, already in some minds,
is to be carried out the first favorable opportunity.   Perhaps the
revolution might take place with less opposition than one supposes,
occurring by acclamation.[36]

The time is not yet come, but the seed is coming up.   Bachaumont,
in 1762, notices a deluge of pamphlets, tracts and political
discussions, "a rage for arguing on financial and government matters."
In 1765, Walpole states that the atheists, who then monopolize
conversation, inveigh against kings as well as against priests.   A
formidable word, that of citizen, imported by Rousseau, has entered
into common speech, and the matter is settled on the women adopting it
as they would a cockade.   "As a friend and a citoyenne could any news
be more agreeable to me than that of peace and the health of my dear
little one?"[37]  Another word, not less significant, that of energy,
formerly ridiculous, becomes fashionable, and is used on every
occasion[38].   Along with language there is a change of sentiment,
ladies of high rank passing over to the opposition.   In 1771, says
the scoffer Bezenval, after the exile of the Parliament "social
meetings for pleasure or other purposes had become petty States-
Generals in which the women, transformed into legislators, established
the premises and confidently propounded maxims of public right." The
Comtesse d'Egmont, a correspondent of the King of Sweden, sends him a
paper on the fundamental law of France, favoring the Parliament, the
last defender of national liberty, against the encroachments of
Chancellor Maupeou.   "The Chancellor," she says,[39] "within the last
six months has brought people to know the history of France who would
have died without any knowledge of it.   .   .   .   I have no doubt,
sire," she adds, "that you never will abuse the power an enraptured
people have entrusted to you without limitation.   .   .   .   May
your reign prove the epoch of the re-establishment of a free and
independent government, but never the source of absolute authority."
Numbers of women of the first rank, Mesdames de la Marck, de
Boufflers, de Brienne, de Mesmes, de Luxembourg, de Croy, think and
write in the same style.   "Absolute power," says one of these, "is a
mortal malady which, insensibly corrupting moral qualities, ends in
the destruction of states.   .   .   .   The actions of sovereigns are
subject to the censure of their subjects as to that of the universe.
.   .   .   France is undone if the present administration lasts."[40]
-  When, under Louis XVI, a new administration proposes and withdraws
feeble measures of reform.   their criticism shows the same firmness:
"Childishness, weakness, constant inconsistency," writes another,[41]
"incessant change; and always worse off than we were before.
Monsieur and M. le Comte d'Artois have just made a journey through the
provinces, but only as people of that kind travel, with a frightful
expenditure and devastation along the whole road, coming back
extraordinarily fat; Monsieur is as big as a hogshead; as to M. le
Comte d'Artois he is bringing about order by the life he leads."   -
An inspiration of humanity animates these feminine breasts along with
that of liberty.   They interest themselves in the poor, in children,
in the people; Madame d'Egmont recommends Gustavus III to plant
Dalecarlia with potatoes.   On the appearance of the engraving
published for the benefit of Calas[42] "all France and even all
Europe, hastens to subscribe for it, the Empress of Russia giving
5,000 livres[43].   "Agriculture, economy, reform, philosophy," writes
Walpole, "are bon ton, even at the court."  -   President Dupaty
having drawn up a memorandum in behalf of three innocent persons,
sentenced "to be broken on the wheel, everybody in society is talking
about it;" "idle conversation no longer prevails in society," says a
correspondent of Gustavus III[44] "since it is that which forms public
opinion.   Words have become actions.   Every sensitive heart praises
with joy a publication inspired by humanity and which appears full of
talent because it is full of feeling." When Latude is released from
the prison of Bicêtre Mme.   de Luxembourg, Mme.   de Boufflers, and
Mme.   de Staël dine with the grocer-woman who "for three years and a
half moved heaven and earth " to set the prisoner free.   It is owing
to the women, to their sensibility and zeal, to a conspiracy of their
sympathies, that M. de Lally succeeds in the rehabilitation of his
father.   When they take a fancy to a person they become infatuated
with him; Madame de Lauzun, very timid, goes so far as to publicly
insult a man who speaks ill of M. Necker.     -  It must be borne in
mind that, in this century, the women were queens, setting the
fashion, giving the tone, leading in conversation and naturally
shaping ideas and opinions[45].   When they take the lead on the
political field we may be sure that the men will follow them: each one
carries her drawing room circle with her.


VI.   WELL-MEANING GOVERNMENT.

Infinite, vague aspirations.   - Generosity of sentiments and of
conduct.   - The mildness and good intentions of the government.   -
Its blindness and optimism.

An aristocracy imbued with humanitarian and radical maxims,
courtiers hostile to the court, privileged persons aiding in
undermining privileges, presents to us a strange spectacle in the
testimony of the time.   A contemporary states that it is an accepted
principle "to change and upset everything."[46]  High and low, in
assemblages, in public places, only reformers and opposing parties are
encountered among the privileged classes.

 "In 1787, almost every prominent man of the peerage in the
Parliament declared himself in favor of resistance.   .   .   .   I
have seen at the dinners we then attended almost every idea put
forward, which, soon afterwards, produced such startling effects."[47]
Already in 1774, M. de Vaublanc, on his way to Metz, finds a diligence
containing an ecclesiastic and a count, a colonel in the hussars,
talking political economy constantly[48].   "It was the fashion of the
day.   Everybody was an economist.   People conversed together only
about philosophy, political economy and especially humanity, and the
means for relieving the people, (le bon peuple), which two words were
in everybody's mouth." To this must be added equality; Thomas, in a
eulogy of Marshal Saxe says, "I cannot conceal it, he was of royal
blood," and this phrase was admired.   A few of the heads of old
parliamentary or seigniorial families maintain the old patrician and
monarchical standard, the new generation succumbing to novelty.   "For
ourselves," says one of them belonging to the youthful class of the
nobility,[49] "with no regret for the past or anxiety for the future,
we marched gaily along over a carpet of flowers concealing an abyss.
Mocking censors of antiquated ways, of the feudal pride of our fathers
and of their sober etiquette, everything antique seemed to us annoying
and ridiculous.   The gravity of old doctrines oppressed us.   The
cheerful philosophy of Voltaire amused and took possession of us.
Without fathoming that of graver writers we admired it for its stamp
of fearlessness and resistance to arbitrary power.   .   .   .
Liberty, what-ever its language, delighted us with its spirit, and
equality on account of its convenience.   It is a pleasant thing to
descend so long as one thinks one can ascend when one pleases; we were
at once enjoying, without forethought, the advantages of the
patriciate and the sweets of a commoner philosophy.   Thus, although
our privileges were at stake, and the remnants of our former supremacy
were undermined under our feet, this little warfare gratified us.
Inexperienced in the attack, we simply admired the spectacle.
Combats with the pen and with words did not appear to us capable of
damaging our existing superiority, which several centuries of
possession had made us regard as impregnable.   The forms of the
edifice remaining intact, we could not see how it could be mined from
within.   We laughed at the serious alarm of the old court and of the
clergy which thundered against the spirit of innovation.   We
applauded republican scenes in the theater,[50] philosophic discourses
in our Academies, the bold publications of the literary class."- If
inequality still subsists in the distribution of offices and of
places, "equality begins to reign in society.   On many occasions
literary titles obtain precedence over titles of nobility.   Courtiers
and servants of the passing fashion, paid their court to Marmontel,
d'Alembert and Raynal.   We frequently saw in company literary men of
the second and third rank greeted and receiving attentions not
extended to the nobles of the provinces.   .   .   .   Institutions
remained monarchical, but manners and customs became republican.   A
word of praise from d'Alembert or Diderot was more esteemed than the
most marked favor from a prince.   .   .    It was impossible to pass
an evening with d'Alembert, or at the Hôtel de Larochefoucauld among
the friends of Turgot, to attend a breakfast at the Abbé Raynal's, to
be admitted into the society and family of M. de Malesherbes, and
lastly, to approach a most amiable queen and a most upright king,
without believing ourselves about to enter upon a kind of golden era
of which preceding centuries afforded no idea.   .   .   .   We were
bewildered by the prismatic hues of fresh ideas and doctrines, radiant
with hopes, ardently aglow for every sort of reputation, enthusiastic
for all talents and beguiled by every seductive dream of a philosophy
that was about to secure the happiness of the human species.   Far
from foreseeing misfortune, excess, crime, the overthrow of thrones
and of principles, the future disclosed to us only the benefits which
humanity was to derive from the sovereignty of Reason.   Freedom of
the press and circulation was given to every reformative writing, to
every project of innovation, to the most liberal ideas and to the
boldest of systems.   Everybody thought himself on the road to
perfection without being under any embarrassment or fearing any kind
of obstacle.   We were proud of being Frenchmen and, yet again,
Frenchmen of the eighteenth century.   .   .   .   Never was a more
terrible awakening preceded by a sweeter slumber or by more seductive
dreams."

They do not content themselves with dreams, with pure desires, with
passive aspirations.   They are active, and truly generous; a worthy
cause suffices to secure their devotion.   On the news of the American
rebellion, the Marquis de Lafayette, leaving his young wife pregnant,
escapes, braves the orders of the court, purchases a frigate, crosses
the ocean and fights by the side of Washington.   "The moment the
quarrel was made known to me," he says, "my heart was enlisted in it,
and my only thought was to rejoin my regiment." Numbers of gentlemen
follow in his footsteps.   They undoubtedly love danger; "the chance
of being shot is too precious to be neglected."[51]  But the main
thing is to emancipate the oppressed; "we showed ourselves
philosophers by becoming paladins,"[52] the chivalric sentiment
enlisting in the service of liberty.   Other services besides these,
more sedentary and less brilliant, find no fewer zealots.   The chief
personages of the provinces in the provincial assemblies,[53] the
bishops, archbishops, abbés, dukes, counts, and marquises, with the
wealthiest and best informed of the notables in the Third-Estate, in
all about a thousand persons, in short the social elect, the entire
upper class convoked by the king, organize the budget, defend the tax-
payer against the fiscal authorities, arrange the land-registry,
equalize the taille, provide a substitute for the corvée, provide
public roads, multiply charitable asylums, educate agriculturists,
proposing, encouraging and directing every species of reformatory
movement.   I have read through the twenty volumes of their procès-
verbaux: no better citizens, no more conscientious men, no more
devoted administrators can be found, none gratuitously taking so much
trouble on themselves with no object but the public welfare.   Never
was an aristocracy so deserving of power at the moment of losing it;
the privileged class, aroused from their indolence, were again
becoming public men, and, restored to their functions, were returning
to their duties.   In 1778, in the first assembly of Berry, the Abbé
de Seguiran, the reporter, has the courage to state that "the
distribution of the taxes should be a fraternal partition of public
obligations."[54]  In 1780 the abbés, priors and chapters of the same
province contribute 60,000 livres of their funds, and a few gentlemen,
in less than twenty-four hours, contribute 17,000 livres.   In 1787,
in the assembly of Alençon the nobility and the clergy tax themselves
30,000 livres to relieve the indigent in each parish subject to
taxation[55].   in the month of April, 1787, the king, in an assembly
of the notables, speaks of "the eagerness with which archbishops and
bishops come forward claiming no exemption in their contributions to
the public revenue." In the month of March, 1789, on the opening of
the bailiwick assemblies, the entire clergy, nearly all the nobility,
in short, the whole body of the privileged class voluntarily renounce
their privileges in relation to taxation.   The sacrifice is voted
unanimously; they themselves offer it to the Third-Estate, and it is
worth while to see their generous and sympathetic tone in the
manuscript procès-verbaux.

 "The nobility of the bailiwick of Tours," says the Marquis de
Lusignan,[56] "considering that they are men and citizens before being
nobles, can make amends in no way more in conformity with the spirit
of justice and patriotism that animates the body, for the long silence
to which it has been condemned by the abuse of ministerial power, than
in declaring to their fellow-citizens that, in future, they will claim
none of the pecuniary advantages secured to them by custom, and that
they unanimously and solemnly bind themselves to bear equally, each in
proportion to his fortune, all taxes and general contributions which
the nation shall prescribe."

 "I repeat," says the Comte de Buzançois at the meeting of the
Third-Estate of Berry, "that we are all brothers, and that we are
anxious to share your burdens.   .   .   .   We desire to have but one
single voice go up to the assembly and thus manifest the union and
harmony which should prevail there.   I am directed to make the
proposal to you to unite with you in one memorandum.   "

 "These qualities are essential in a deputy," says the Marquis de
Barbancon speaking for the nobles of Chateauroux, "integrity, firmness
and knowledge; the first two are equally found among the deputies of
the three orders; but knowledge will be more generally found in the
Third-Estate, which is more accustomed to public affairs."

 "A new order of things is unfolding before us," says the Abbé
Legrand in the name of the clergy of Chateauroux; "the veil of
prejudice is being torn away and giving place to Reason.   She is
possessing herself of all French hearts, attacking at the root
whatever is based on former opinion and deriving her power only from
herself."

 Not only do the privileged classes make advances but it is no
effort to them; they use the same language as the people of the Third-
Estate; they are disciples of the same philosophers and seem to start
from the same principles.   The nobility of Clermont in Beauvoisis[57]
orders its deputies "to demand, first of all, an explicit declaration
of the rights belonging to all men." The nobles of Mantes and Meulan
affirm "that political principles are as absolute as moral principles,
since both have reason for a common basis." The nobles of Rheims
demand "that the king be entreated to order the demolition of the
Bastille." Frequently, after such expressions and with such a yielding
disposition, the delegates of the nobles and clergy are greeted in the
assemblies of the 'Third-Estate with the clapping of hands, "tears"
and enthusiasm.   On witnessing such effusions how can one avoid
believing in concord? And how can one foresee strife at the first turn
of the road on which they have just fraternally entered hand in hand?

Wisdom of this melancholy stamp is not theirs.   They set out with
the principle that man, and especially the man of the people, is good;
why conjecture that he may desire evil for those who wish him well?
They are conscientious in their benevolence and sympathy for him.
Not only do they utter these sentiments but they give them proof.
"At this moment," says a contemporary,[58] "the most active pity
animates all breasts; the great dread of the opulent is to appear
insensible." The archbishop of Paris, subsequently followed and
stoned, is the donator of 100,000 crowns to the hospital of the Hôtel-
Dieu.   The intendant Berthier, who is to be massacred, draws up the
new assessment-roll of the Ile-de-France, equalizing the taille, which
act allows him to abate the rate, at first, an eighth, and next, a
quarter[59].   The financier Beaujon constructs a hospital.   Necker
refuses the salary of his place and lends the treasury two millions to
re-establish public credit.   The Duc de Charost, from 1770[60] down,
abolishes seigniorial corvées on his domain and founds a hospital in
his seigniory of Meillant.   The Prince de Beaufremont, the presidents
de Vezet, de Chamolles, de Chaillot, with many seigniors beside in
Franche-Comté, follow the example of the king in emancipating their
serfs[61].   The bishop of Saint-Claude demands, in spite of his
chapter, the enfranchisement of his mainmorts.   The Marquis de
Mirabeau establishes on his domain in Limousin a gratuitous bureau for
the settlement of lawsuits, while daily, at Fleury, he causes nine
hundred pounds of cheap bread to be made for the use of "the poor
people, who fight to see who shall have it."[62] M. de Barral, bishop
of Castres, directs his curates to preach and to diffuse the
cultivation of potatoes.   The Marquis de Guerchy himself mounts on
the top of a pile of hay with Arthur Young to learn how to construct a
hay-stack.   The Marquis de Lasteyrie imports lithography into France.
A number of grand seigniors and prelates figure in the agricultural
societies, compose or translate useful books, familiarize themselves
with the applications of science, study political economy, inform
themselves about industries, and interest themselves, either as
amateurs or promoters, in every public amelioration.   " Never," says
Lacretelle again, "were the French so combined together to combat the
evils to which nature makes us pay tribute, and those which in a
thousand ways creep into all social institutions." Can it be admitted
that so many good intentions thus operating together are to end in
destruction?  -  All take courage, government as well as the higher
class, in the thought of the good accomplished, or which they desire
to accomplish.   The king remembers that he has restored civil rights
to the Protestants, abolished preliminary torture, suppressed the
corvée in kind, established the free circulation of grains, instituted
provincial assemblies, built up the marine, assisted the Americans,
emancipated his own serfs, diminished the expenses of his household,
employed Malesherbes, Turgot and Necker, given full play to the press,
and listened to public opinion[63].   No government displayed greater
mildness; on the 14th of July, 1789, only seven prisoners were
confined in the Bastille, of whom one was an idiot, another kept there
by his family, and four under the charge of counterfeiting[64].   No
sovereign was more humane, more charitable, more preoccupied with the
unfortunate.   In 1784, the year of inundations and epidemics, he
renders assistance to the amount of three millions.   Appeals are made
to him direct, even for personal accidents.   On the 8th of June,
1785, he sends two hundred livres to the wife of a Breton laboring-man
who, already having two children, brings three at once into the
world[65].   During a severe winter he allows the poor daily to invade
his kitchen.   It is quite probable that, next to Turgot, he is the
man of his day who loved the people most.   --  His delegates under
him conform to his views; I have read countless letters by intendants
who try to appear as little Turgots.   "One builds a hospital, another
admits artisans at his table;"[66] a certain individual undertakes the
draining of a marsh.  M. de la Tour, in Provence, is so beneficent
during a period of forty years that the Tiers-Etat vote him a gold
medal in spite of himself[67].   A governor delivers a course of
lectures on economical bread-making.    -  What possible danger is
there for shepherds of this kind amidst their flocks? On the king
convoking the States-General nobody had "any suspicion," nor fear of
the future.   "A new State constitution is spoken of as an easy
performance, and as a matter of course."[68]   -   "The best and most
virtuous men see in this the beginning of a new era of happiness for
France and for the whole civilized world.   The ambitious rejoice in
the broad field open to their desires.   But it would have been
impossible to find the most morose, the most timid, the most
enthusiastic of men anticipating any one of the extraordinary events
towards which the assembled states were drifting."

____________________________________________________________

Notes:

[1] Macaulay.

[2] Stendhal, "Rome, Naples et Florence," 371.

[3] Morellet, "Mémoires," I.   139 (on the writings and
conversations of Diderot, d,Holbach and the atheists).   "At that
time, in this philosophy, all seemed innocent enough, it being
confined to the limits of speculation, and never seeking, even in its
boldest flights, anything beyond a calm intellectual exercise.

[4] "L'Homme aux quarante écus." Cf.   Voltaire, "Mémoires," the
suppers given by Frederick II.   "Never in any place in the world was
there greater freedom of conversation concerning the superstitions of
mankind.

[5] Morellet, Mémoires," I.   133.

[6] Galiani, "Correspondance, passim.

[7] Bachaumont, III.   93 (1766), II.   202 (1765).

[8] Geffroy, "Gustave III.," I.   114.

[9] Villemain, "Tableau de la Litterature au dix-huitième siècle,"
IV.   409.

[10] Grimm, "corresp.   littéraire," IV.   176.   De Ségur,
"Mémoires," I.   113.

[11] "Princesse de Babylone." - Cf.   "le Mondain."

[12] Here we may have an important motive for the socialist attitudes
towards sexual morality as it was during the activie nineteen
seventies until the unexpected appearance of AIDS put an abrupt end to
the proceedings.   (SR.)

[13] Mme.   d'Epinay, ed.   Boiteau, I.   216: at a supper given by
Mlle.   Quinault, the comedian, at which are present Saint-Lambert,
the Prince de .   .   .   .   , Duclos and Mme.   d'Epinay.

[14] For example, the father of Marmant, a military gentleman, who,
having won the cross of St.   Louis at twenty-eight, abandons the
service because he finds that promotion is only for people of the
court.   In retirement on his estates he is a liberal, teaching his
son to read the reports made by Necker.   (Marshal Marmont,
"Mémoires," I.   9).

[15] Aubertin, "L'Esprit public," in the 18th century, p.   7.

[16] Montesquieu, "Lettres Persanes," (Letter 61).    -  Cf.
Voltaire, ("Dîner du Comte de Boulainvilliers").

[17] Aubertin, pp.   281, 282, 285, 289.

[18] Horace Walpole, "Letters and Correspondence," Sept.   27th,
1765, October 18th, 28th, and November 19th, 1766.

[19] "Journal et Mémoires de Collé," published by H.   Bonhomme,
II.   24 (October, 1755), and III.165 (October 1767).

[20] "Corresp.   littéraire," by Grimm (September, October, 1770).

[21] Mme.   De Genlis, "Adèle et Théodore," I, 312.

[22] De Goncourt, "La femme au dix-huitième siècle," 371-373.   -
Bachaumont, I.   224 (April 13, 1763).

[23] Mme.   de Genlis, "Adèle et Théodore," II.   326.

[24] "Tableau de Paris," III.44.

[25] Métra.   "Correspondance secrète," XVII.   387 (March 7,
1785).

[26] De Goncourt, ibid.   456.   - Vicomtesse de Noailles, "Vie de
la Princesse de Poix," formerly de Beauvau.

[27] The Abbé de Latteignaut, canon of Rheims, the author of some
light poetry and convivial songs, "has just composed for Nicolet's
theater a parade in which the intrigue is supported by a good many
broad jests, very much in the fashion at this time.   The courtiers
who give the tone to this theater think the canon of Rheims superb."
(Bachaumont, IV.   174, November, 1768).

[28] Bachaumont, III.   253.   - Châteaubriand, "Mémoires," I.
246.

[29] Champfort, 279.

[30] Merlin de Thionville, "Vie et correspondance," by Jean
Raynaud.   ("La Chartreuse du Val Saint-Pierre." Read the entire
passage).   - "Souvenirs Manuscrits," by M  - ..

[31] Rivarol, "Mémoires," I.   344.

[32] Mercier, IV.   142.   "In Auvergne, says M. de Montlosier, I
formed for myself a society of priests, men of wit, some of whom were
deists and others open atheists, with whom I carried on a contest with
my brother." ("Mémoires," I.37).

[33] Lafayette.   "Mémoires," III.   58.

[34] "Dict.   Phil." article "Wheat." - The most important work of
Quesnay is of the year 1758, "Tableau économique."

[35] D'Argenson, "Mémoires," IV.   141; VI.   320, 465; VII.   23;
VIII.   153, (1752, 1753, 1754).   - Rousseau's discourse on
Inequality belongs also to 1753.   On this steady march of opinion
consult the excellent work of d'Aubertin, "L'Esprit public au dix-
huitième siècle."

[36] This seems to be prophetic of the night of August 4, 1789.

[37] "Corresp.   de Laurette de Malboissière," published by the
Marquise de la Grange.   (Sept.   4, 1762, November 8, 1762).

[38] Madame du Deffant in a letter to Madame de Choiseul, (quoted
by Geffroy), "Gustave et la cour de France," I.   279.

[39] Geffroy, ibid.   I.   232, 241, 245.

[40] Geffroy, ibid.   I.267, 281.   See letters by Madame de
Boufflers (October, 1772, July 1774).

[41] Ibid..   I.   285.   The letters of Mme.   de la March (1776,
1777, 1779).

[42] A victim of religious rancor against the protestants, whose
cause, taken op by Voltaire, excited great indignation.- TR.

[43] Bachaumont, III.   14 (March 28, 1766.   Walpole, Oct.   6,
1775).

[44] Geffloy, ibid.   (A letter by Mme Staël, 5776).

[45] Collé, "Journal," III.   437 (1770) : "Women have got the
upper hand with the French to such an extent, they have so subjugated
them, that they neither feel nor think except as they do."

[46] "Correspondance," by Métra, III.   200; IV.   131.

[47] "Mémoires du Chancelier Pasquier, _Ed.  Plon Paris 1893, Vol.
I.  page26.

[48] De Vaublanc, "Souvenirs," I.   117, 377.

[49] De Ségur, "Mémoires," I.   17.

[50] Ibid.   I.   151.    "I saw the entire Court at the theater in
the château at Versailles enthusiastically applaud Voltaire's tragedy
of 'Brutus,' and especially these lines:

Je suis fils de Brutus, et je porte en mon coeur
La liberté gravée et les rois en horreur."

[51] De Lauzun, 80 (in relation to his expedition into Corsica).

[52] De Ségur, I.   87.

[53] The assemblies of Berry and Haute-Guyenne began in 1778 and
1779; those of other generalships in 1787.   All functioned until
1789.   (Cf.   Léonce de Lavergne, "Les Assemblées provinciales").

[54] Léonce de Lavergne, ibid.   26, 55, 183.   The tax department
of the provincial assembly of Tours likewise makes its demands on the
privileged class in the matter of taxation.

[55] Procés-verbaux of the prov.   ass.   of Normandy, the
generalship of Alençon, 252.    -  Cf.   Archives nationales, II,
1149: in 1778 in the generalship of Moulins, thirty-nine persons,
mostly nobles, supply from their own funds 18,950 livres to the 60,000
livres allowed by the king for roads and asylums.

[56] Archives nationales, procès-verbaux and registers of the
States-General, vol.   XLIX.   p.712, 714 (the nobles and clergy of
Dijon); vol.   XVI.   p.   183 (the nobles of Auxerre) vol.   XXIX.
pp.352, 455, 458 (the clergy and nobles of Berry); vol.   CL.   p.266
(the clergy and nobles of Tours); vol.   XXIX; the clergy and nobles
of Chateauroux, (January 29, 1789); pp.   572, 582.   vol.   XIII.
765 (the nobles of Autun).   - See as a summary of the whole, the
"Résumé des Cahiers" by Prud'homme, 3 vols.

[57] Prud'homme, ibid..   II.   39, 51, 59.   De Lavergne, 384.
In 1788, two hundred gentlemen of the first families of Dauphiny sign,
conjointly with the clergy and the Third-Estate of the province, an
address to the king in which occurs the following passage: "Neither
time nor obligation legitimizes despotism; the rights of men derive
from nature alone and are independent of their engagements."

[58] Lacretelle, "Hist.   de France au dix-huitième siècle," V.2.

[59] Procès-verbeaux of the prov.   ass.   of the Ile-de-France
(1787), p.127.

[60] De Lavergne, ibid..   52, 369.

[61] "Le cri de la raison," by Clerget, curé d'Onans (1789), p.258.

[62] Lucas de Montigny, "Mémoires de Mirabeau," I.   290, 368.    -
Théron de Montaugé, "L'agriculture et les classes rurales dans le pays
Toulousain," p.   14.

[63] "Foreigners generally could scarcely form an idea of the power
of public opinion at this time in France; they can with difficulty
comprehend the nature of that invisible power which commands even in
the king's palace." (Necker, 1784, quoted by De Tocqueville).

[64] Granier de Cassagnac, II.   236.    - M. de Malesherbes,
according to custom, inspected the different state prisons, at the
beginning of the reign of Louis XVI.   "He told me himself that he had
only released two." (Senac de Meilhan, "Du gouvemement, des moeurs, et
des conditions en France.").

[65] Archives nationales, II.   1418, 1149, F.   14, 2073.
(Assistance rendered to various suffering provinces and places.)

[66] Aubertin, p.484 (according to Bachaumont).

[67] De Lavergne, 472.

[68] Mathieu Dumas, "Mémoires," I.426.    -  Sir Samuel Romilly,
"Mémoires," I.   99.-- "Confidence increased even to extravagance,"
(Mme.   de Genlis).    -  On the 29th June, 1789, Necker said at the
council of the king at Marly, "What is more frivolous than the fears
now entertained concerning the organization of the assembly of the
States-General? No law can be passed without obtaining the king's
assent" (De Barentin, "Mémoires," p.   187).    -  Address of the
National Assembly to its constituents, October 2, 1789.   "A great
revolution of which the idea should have appeared chimerical a few
months since has been effected amongst us."






   CHAPTER III.  THE MIDDLE CLASS.

   I.    THE PAST.

   The former spirit of the Third-Estate.  - Public matters concern
the king only.  -  Limits of the Jansenist and parliamentarian
opposition.

   The new philosophy, confined to a select circle, had long served
as a mere luxury for refined society.  Merchants, manufacturers,
shopkeepers, lawyers, attorneys, physicians, actors, professors,
curates, every description of functionary, employee and clerk, the
entire middle class, had been absorbed with its own cares.  The
horizon of each was limited, being that of the profession or
occupation which each exercised, that of the corporation in which each
one was comprised, of the town in which each one was born, and, at the
utmost, that of the province which each one inhabited[1].  A dearth of
ideas coupled with conscious diffidence restrained the bourgeois
within his hereditary barriers.  His eyes seldom chanced to wander
outside of them into the forbidden and dangerous territory of state
affairs; hardly was a furtive and rare glance bestowed on any of the
public acts, on the matters which "belonged to the king." There was no
critical irritability then, except with the bar, the compulsory
satellite of the Parliament, and borne along in its orbit.  In 1718,
after a session of the royal court (lit de justice), the lawyers of
Paris being on a strike the Regent exclaims angrily and with
astonishment, "What! those fellows meddling too!"[2]  It must be
stated furthermore that many kept themselves in the background.  "My
father and myself," afterwards writes the advocate Barbier, "took no
part in the uproars, among those caustic and turbulent spirits." and
he adds this significant article of faith: "I believe that one has to
fulfill his duties honorably, without concerning oneself with state
affairs, in which one has no mission and exercises no power." During
the first half of the eighteenth century I am able to discover but one
center of opposition in the Third-Estate , the Parliament; and around
it, feeding the flame, the ancient Gallican or Jansenist spirit.  "The
good city of Paris," writes Barbier in 1733, "is Jansenist from top to
bottom," and not alone the magistrates, the lawyers, the professors,
the best among the bourgeoisie, "but again the mass of the Parisians,
men, women and children, all upholding that doctrine, without
comprehending it, or understanding any of its distinctions and
interpretations, out of hatred to Rome and the Jesuits.  Women, the
silliest, and even chambermaids, would be hacked to pieces for it.  .
.  " This party is increased by the honest folks of the kingdom who
detest persecutions and injustice.  Accordingly, when the various
chambers of magistrates, in conjunction with the lawyers, tender their
resignations and file out of the palace "amidst a countless multitude,
the crowd exclaims: Behold the true Romans, the fathers of the
country! and as the two counselors Pucelle and Menguy pass along they
fling them crowns." The quarrel between the Parliament and the Court,
constantly revived, is one of the sparks which provokes the grand
final explosion, while the Jansenist embers, smoldering in the ashes,
are to be of use in 1791 when the ecclesiastical edifice comes to be
attacked.  But, within this old chimney-corner only warm embers are
now found, firebrands covered up, sometimes scattering sparks and
flames, but in themselves and by themselves, not incendiary; the flame
is kept within bounds by its nature, and its supplies limit its heat.
The Jansenist is too good a Christian not to respect powers
inaugurated from above.  The parliamentarian, conservative through his
profession, would be horrified at overthrowing the established order
of things.  Both combat for tradition and against innovation; hence,
after having defended the past against arbitrary power they are to
defend it against revolutionary violence, and to fall, the one into
impotency and the other into oblivion.



   II.   CHANGE IN THE CONDITION OF THE BOURGEOIS.

   Change in the condition of the bourgeois.  - He becomes wealthy.
- He makes loans to the State.  - The danger of his creditorship.  -
He interests himself in public matters.

   The uprising is, however, late to catch on among the middle
class, and, before it can take hold, the resistant material must
gradually be made inflammable.   --   In the eighteenth century a
great change takes place in the condition of the Third-Estate .  The
bourgeois has worked, manufactured, traded, earned and saved money,
and has daily become richer and richer.[3] This great expansion of
enterprises, of trade, of speculation and of fortunes dates from
Law;[4] arrested by war it reappears with more vigor and more
animation at each interval of peace after the treaty of Aix-la-
Chapelle in 1748, and that of Paris in 1763, and especially after the
beginning of the reign of Louis XVI.  The exports of France which
amounted to

   106 millions in 1720

   124 millions in 1735

   192 millions in 1748

   257 millions in 1755

   309 millions in 1776

   354 millions in 1788.

   In 1786 Saint Domingo alone ships back to France for 131
millions of its products, and in return receives 44 millions in
merchandise.  As a result of these exchanges we see, at Nantes, and at
Bordeaux, the creation of colossal commercial houses.  "I consider
Bordeaux, says Arthur Young, as richer and doing more business than
any city in England except London; .  .  .  of late years the progress
of maritime commerce has been more rapid in France than even in
England."[5] According to an administrator of the day, if the taxes on
the consumption of products daily increase the revenue, this is
because the industry since 1774 has developed a number of new
products[6].  And this progress is regular and constant.  "We may
calculate," says Necker in 1781, "on an increase of two millions a
year on all the duties on consumption."   --   In this great exertion
of innovation, labor and engineering, Paris, constantly growing, is
the central workshop.  It enjoys, to a much greater extent than today,
the monopoly of all works of intelligence and taste, books, pictures,
engravings, statues, jewelry, toilet details, carriages, furniture,
articles of fashion and rarity, whatever affords pleasure and
ornamentation for an elegant worldly society; all Europe is supplied
by it.  In 1774 its trade in books is estimated at 45 millions, and
that of London at only one-quarter of that sum[7].  Upon the profits
many immense and even more numerous moderate fortunes were built up,
and these now became available for investment.   --   In fact, we see
the noblest hands stretching out to receive them, princes of the
blood, provincial assemblies, assemblies of the clergy, and, at the
head of all, the king, who, the most needy, borrows at ten percent and
is always in search of additional lenders.  Already under Fleury, the
debt has augmented to 18 millions in interests, and during the Seven
years' War, to 34 millions.  Under Louis XVI., M. Necker borrows a
capital of 530 millions; M. Joly de Fleury, 300 millions; M. de
Calonne, 800 millions; in all 1630 millions over a period of ten
years.  The interest of the public debt, only 45 millions in 1755,
reaches 106 millions in 1776 and amounts to 206 millions in 1789[8].
What creditors which these few figures tell us about !  As the Third-
Estate , it must be noted, is the sole class making and saving money,
nearly all these creditors belong it.  Thousands of others must be
added to these.  In the first place, the financiers who make advances
to the government, advances that are indispensable, because, from time
immemorial, it has eaten its corn on the blade, so the present year is
always gnawing into the product of coming years; there are 80 millions
of advances in 1759, and 170 millions in 1783.  In the second place
there are so many suppliers, large and small, who, on all parts of the
territory, keep accounts with the government for their supplies and
for public works, a veritable army and increasing daily, since the
government, impelled by centralization, takes sole responsibility for
all ventures, and, requested by public opinion, it increases the
number of undertakings useful to the public.  Under Louis XV.  the
State builds six thousand leagues of roads, and under Louis XVI.  in
1788, to guard against famine, it purchases grain to the amount of
forty millions.

   Through this increase of activity and its demands for capital
the State becomes the universal debtor; henceforth public affairs are
no longer exclusively the king's business.  His creditors become
uneasy at his expenditures; for it is their money he wastes, and, if
he proves a bad administrator, they will be ruined.  They want to know
something of his budget, to examine his books: a lender always has the
right to look after his securities.  We accordingly see the bourgeois
raising his head and beginning to pay close attention to the great
machine whose performances, hitherto concealed from vulgar eyes, have,
up to the present time, been kept a state secret.  He becomes a
politician, and, at the same time, discontented.  For it cannot be
denied that these matters, in which he is interested, are badly
conducted.  Any young man of good family managing affairs in the same
way would be checked.  The expenses of the administration of the State
are always in excess of the revenue[9].  According to official
admissions[10] the annual deficit amounted to 70 in 1770, and 80
millions in 1783; when one has attempted to reduce this it has been
through bankruptcies; one to the tune of two milliards at the end of
the reign of Louis XIV, and another almost equal to it in the time of
Law, and another on from a third to a half of all the interests in the
time of Terray, without mentioning suppressions in detail, reductions,
indefinite delays in payment, and other violent and fraudulent means
which a powerful debtor employs with impunity against a feeble
creditor.  "Fifty-six violations of public faith have occurred from
Henry IV down to the ministry of M. de Loménie inclusive,"[11] while a
last bankruptcy, more frightful than the others, loom up on the
horizon.  Several persons, Bezenval and Linguet for instance,
earnestly recommend it as a necessary and salutary amputation.  Not
only are there precedents for this, and in this respect the government
will do no more than follow its own example, but such is its daily
practice, since it lives only from day to day, by dint of expedients
and delays, digging one hole to stop up another, and escaping failure
only through the forced patience which it imposes on its creditors.
With it, says a contemporary, people were never sure of anything,
being always obliged to wait[12].  "Were their capital invested in its
loans, they could never rely on a fixed date for the payment of
interest.  Did they build ships, repair highways, or the soldiers
clothed, they had no guarantees for their advances, no certificates of
repayment, being reduced to calculate the chances involved in a
ministerial contract as they would the risks of a bold speculation."
It pays if it can and only when it can, even the members of the
household, the purveyors of the table and the personal attendants of
the king.  In 1753 the domestics of Louis XV had received nothing for
three years.  We have seen how his grooms went out to beg during the
night in the streets of Versailles; how his purveyors "hid
themselves;" how , under Louis XVI in 1778, there were 792,620 francs
due to the wine-merchant, and 3,467,980 francs to the purveyor of fish
and meat[13].  In 1788, so great is the distress, the Minister de
Loménie appropriates and expends the funds of a private subscription
raised for a hospital, and, at the time of his resignation, the
treasury is empty, save 450,000 francs, half of which he puts in his
pocket.  What an administration!  --  In the presence of this debtor,
evidently becoming insolvent, all people, far and near, interested in
his business, consult together with alarm, and debtors are
innumerable, consisting of bankers, merchants, manufacturers,
employees, lenders of every kind and degree, and, in the front rank,
the capitalists, who have put all their means for life into his hands,
and who are to beg should he not pay them annually the 44 millions he
owes them; the industrialists and traders who have entrusted their
commercial integrity to him and who would shrink with horror from
failure as its issue; and after these come their creditors, their
clerks, their relations, in short, the largest portion of the laboring
and peaceable class which, thus far, had obeyed without a murmur and
never dreamed of bringing the established order of things under its
control.  Henceforth this class will exercise control attentively,
distrustfully and angrily.  Woe to those who are at fault, for they
well know that the ruin of the State is their ruin.



   III.   SOCIAL PROMOTION.

   He rises on the social ladder.  - The noble draws near to him.
- He becomes cultivated.  - He enters into society.  - He regards
himself as the equal of the noble.  - Privileges an annoyance.

     Meanwhile this class has climbed up the social ladder, and,
through its élite, rejoined those in the highest position.  Formerly
between Dorante and M. Jourdain, between Don Juan and M. Dimanche,[14]
between M. Sotenville himself and Georges Dandin, the distance was
vast; everything was different - dress, house, habits, characters,
points of honor, ideas and language.  On the one hand the nobles are
drawn nearer to the Third-Estate and, on the other, the Third-Estate
is drawn nearer to the nobles, actual equality having preceded
equality as a right.   --   On the approach of the year 1789 it was
difficult to distinguish one from the other in the street.  The sword
is no longer worn by gentlemen in the city; they have abandoned
embroideries and laces, and walk about in plain frock-coats, or drive
themselves in their cabriolets[15].  "The simplicity of English
customs," and the customs of the Third-Estate seem to them better
adapted to ordinary life.  Their prominence proves irksome to them and
they grow weary of being always on parade.  Henceforth they accept
familiarity that they may enjoy freedom of action, and are content "to
mingle with their fellow-citizens without obstacle or ostentation.   -
-  "It is certainly a grave sign, and the old feudal spirits have
reason to tremble.  The Marquis de Mirabeau, on learning that his son
wishes to act as his own lawyer, consoles himself by seeing others, of
still higher rank, do much worse[16].

   "As it was difficult to accept the idea that the grandson of my
father, whom we just had seen pass by on the promenade, everybody,
young and old, raising their hats to him from afar, would soon be seen
at the bar of a lower tribunal, there to contest minor legal matters
with pettifoggers; but I said to myself, however, that Louis XIV would
be still more astonished had he seen the wife of his grand-successor
dressed in a peasant's frock and apron, with no attendants, not a page
or any one else, running about the palace and the terraces, requesting
the first scamp in a frock-coat she encountered to give her his hand,
which he simply does, all the way down to the foot of the steps."

   But the leveling of manners and appearances of life reflected,
indeed, only an equalization of minds and tempers.  The antique
scenery being torn away indicates the disappearance of the sentiments
to which it belonged.  It indicated gravity, dignity, custom of self-
control and of exposed, in authority and command.  It was the rigid
and sumptuous parade of a social corps of staff-officers.  At this
time the parade is discontinued because the corps has been dissolved.
If the nobles dress like the bourgeoisie it is owing to their having
become bourgeois, that is to say, idlers retired from business, with
nothing to do but to talk and amuse themselves.   --  Undoubtedly they
amuse themselves and converse like people of refinement; but it is not
very difficult to equal them in this respect.  Now that the Third-
Estate has acquired its wealth a good many commoners have become
people of society.  The successors of Samuel Bernard are no longer so
many Turcarets, but Paris-Duverneys, Saint-Jameses, Labordes, refined
men, people of culture and of feeling, possessing tact, literary and
philosophical attainments, benevolent, giving parties and knowing how
to entertain[17].  With them, slightly different, we find the same
company as with a grand lord, the same ideas and the same tone.  Their
sons, messieurs de Villemer, de Francueil, d'Epinay, throw money out
of the window with as much elegance as the young dukes with whom they
sup.  A parvenu with money and intellect soon learns the ropes, and
his son, if not himself, is initiated: a few years' exercises in an
academy, a dancing-master, and one of the four thousand public offices
which confer nobility, supply him with the deficient appearances.
Now, in these times, as soon as one knows how to conform to the laws
of good-breeding, how to bow and how to converse, one possesses a
patent for admission everywhere.  An Englishman[18] remarks that one
of the first expressions employed in praise of a man is, "he has a
very graceful address." The Maréchale de Luxembourg, so high-spirited,
always selects Laharpe as her cavalier, because "he offers his arm so
well."  -- The commoner not only enters the drawing-room, if he is
fitted for it, but he stands foremost in it if he has any talent.  The
first place in conversation, and even in public consideration, is for
Voltaire, the son of a notary, for Diderot, the son of a cutler, for
Rousseau, the son of a watchmaker, for d'Alembert, a foundling brought
up by a glazier; and, after the great men have disappeared, and no
writers of the second grade are left, the leading duchesses are still
content to have the seats at their tables occupied by Champfort,
another foundling, Beaumarchais, the son of another watchmaker,
Laharpe, supported and raised on charity, Marmontel, the son of a
village tailor, and may others of less note, in short, every parvenu
possessing wit.

   The nobility, to perfect their own accomplishments, borrow their
pens and aspire to their successes.  "We have recovered from those old
Gothic and absurd prejudices against literary culture," says the
Prince de Hénin;[19] "as for myself I would compose a comedy to-morrow
if I had the talent, and if I happened to be made a little angry, I
would perform in it." And, in fact, "the Vicomte de Ségur, son of the
minister of war, plays the part of the lover in 'Nina' on Mlle.  de
Guimard's stage with the actors of the Italian Comedy."[20]  One of
Mme.  de Genlis's personages, returning to Paris after five years'
absence, says that "he left men wholly devoted to play, hunting, and
their small houses, and he finds them all turned authors."[21]  They
hawk about their tragedies, comedies, novels, eclogues, dissertations
and treatises of all kinds from one drawing room to another.  They
strive to get their pieces played; they previously submit them to the
judgment of actors; they solicit a word of praise from the Mercure;
they read fables at the sittings of the Academy.  They become involved
in the bickering, in the vainglory, in the pettiness of literary life,
and still worse, of the life of the stage, inasmuch as they are
themselves performers and play in company with real actors in hundreds
of private theaters.  Add to this, if you please, other petty amateur
talents such as sketching in water-colors, writing songs, and playing
the flute.   --   After this amalgamation of classes and this transfer
of parts what remains of the superiority of the nobles? By what
special merit, through what recognized capacity are they to secure
respect of a member of the Third-Estate? Outside of fashionable
elegance and a few points of breeding, in what respect they differ
from him? What superior education, what familiarity with affairs, what
experience with government, what political instruction, what local
ascendancy, what moral authority can be alleged to sanction their
pretensions to the highest places?  --  In the way of practice, the
Third-Estate already does the work, providing the qualified men, the
intendants, the ministerial head-clerks, the lay and ecclesiastical
administrators, the competent laborers of all kinds and degrees.  Call
to mind the Marquis of whom we have just spoken, a former captain in
the French guards, a man of feeling and of loyalty, admitting at the
elections of 1789 that "the knowledge essential to a deputy would most
generally be found in the Third-Estate , the mind there being
accustomed to business."   --  In the way of theory: the commoner is
as well-informed as the noble, and he thinks he is still better
informed, because, having read the same books and arrived at the same
principles, he does not, like him, stop half-way on the road to their
consequences, but plunges headlong to the very depths of the doctrine,
convinced that his logic is clairvoyance and that he is more
enlightened because he is the least prejudiced.   --   Consider the
young men who, about twenty years of age in 1780, born in industrious
families, accustomed to effort and able to work twelve hours a day, a
Barnave, a Carnot, a Roederer, a Merlin de Thionville, a Robespierre,
an energetic stock, feeling their strength, criticizing their rivals,
aware of their weakness, comparing their own application and education
to their levity and incompetence, and, at the moment when youthful
ambition stirs within them, seeing themselves excluded in advance from
any superior position, consigned for life to subaltern employment, and
subjected in every career to the precedence of superiors who they
hardly recognize as their equals.  At the artillery examinations where
Chérin, the genealogist, refuses commoners, and where the Abbé Bosen,
a mathematician, rejects the ignorant, it is discovered that capacity
is wanting among the noble pupils and nobility among the capable
pupils,[22] the two qualities of gentility and intelligence seeming to
exclude each other, as there are but four or five out of a hundred
pupils who combine the two conditions.  Now, as society at this time
is mixed, such tests are frequent and easy.  Whether lawyer,
physician, or man of letters, a member of the Third-Estate with whom a
duke converses familiarly, who sits in a diligence alongside of a
count-colonel of hussars,[23] can appreciate his companion or his
interlocutor, weigh his ideas, test his merit and esteem him at his
correct value, and I am sure that he does not overrate him.    --
Now that the nobles have lost their special capacities and the Third-
Estate have acquired general competence, and as they are on the same
level in education and competence, the inequality which separates them
has become offensive because it has become useless.   Nobility being
instituted by custom is no longer sanctified by conscience; the Third-
Estate being justly excited against privileges that have no
justification, whether in the capacity of the noble or in the
incapacity of the bourgeois.


   IV.   ROUSSEAU'S PHILOSOPHY SPREADS AND TAKES HOLD.

   Philosophy in the minds thus fitted for it.  - That of Rousseau
prominent.  - This philosophy in harmony with new necessities.  - It
is adopted by the Third-Estate .

     Distrust and anger against a government putting all fortunes
at risk, rancor and hostility against a nobility barring all roads to
popular advancement, are, then, the sentiments developing themselves
among the middle class solely due to their advance in wealth and
culture.   --   We can imagine the effect of the new philosophy upon
people with such attitudes.  At first, confined to the aristocratic
reservoir, the doctrine filters out through numerous cracks like so
many trickling streams, to scatter imperceptibly among the lower
class.  Already, in 1727, Barbier, a bourgeois of the old school and
having little knowledge of philosophy and philosophers except the
name, writes in his journal:

   "A hundred poor families are deprived of the annuities on which
they supported themselves, acquired with bonds for which the capital
is obliterated; 56,000 livres are given in pensions to people who have
held the best offices, where they have amassed considerable property,
always at the expense of the people, and all this merely that they may
rest themselves and do nothing."[24]

   One by one, reformative ideas penetrate to his office of
consulting advocate; conversation has sufficed to propagate them,
homely common sense needing no philosophy to secure their recognition.

   "The tax on property," said he, in 1750, "should be proportioned
and equally distributed among all the king's subjects and the members
of the government, in proportion to the property each really possesses
in the kingdom; in England, the lands of the nobility, the clergy and
the Third-Estate pay alike without distinction, and nothing is more
just."

    In the six years which follow the flood increases.  People
denounce the government in the cafés, on their promenades, while the
police dare not arrest malcontents "because they would have to arrest
everybody." The disaffection goes on increasing up to the end of the
reign.  In 1744, says the bookseller Hardy, during the king's illness
at Metz, private individuals cause six thousand masses to be said for
his recovery and pay for them at the sacristy of Notre Dame; in 1757,
after Damiens's attempt on the king's life, the number of masses
demanded is only six hundred; in 1774, during the malady which carries
him off, the number falls down to three.  The complete discredit of
the government, the immense success of Rousseau, these two events,
occurring simultaneously, afford a date for the conversion of the
Third-Estate to philosophy[25].  A traveler, at the beginning of the
reign of Louis XVI, who returns home after some years' absence, on
being asked what change he noticed in the nation, replied, "Nothing,
except that what used to be talked about in the drawing-rooms is
repeated in the streets."[26]  And that which is repeated in the
streets is Rousseau's doctrine, the Discourse on Inequality, the
Social Contract amplified, popularized and repeated by adherents in
every possible way and in all their forms.  What could be more
fascinating for the man of the Third-Estate? Not only is this theory
in vogue, and encountered by him at the decisive moment when, for the
first time, he turns his attention to general principles, but again it
provides him with arms against social inequality and political
absolutism, and much sharper than he needs.  To people disposed to put
restraints on power and to abolish privileges, what guide is more
sympathetic than the writer of genius, the powerful logician, the
impassioned orator, who establishes natural law, who repudiates
historic law, who proclaims the equality of men, who contends for the
sovereignty of the people, who denounces on every page the usurpation,
the vices, the worthlessness, the malefactions of the great and of
kings! And I omit the points by which he makes acceptable to a rigid
and laborious bourgeoisie, to the new men that are working and
advancing themselves, his steady earnestness, his harsh and bitter
tone, his eulogy of simple habits, of domestic virtues, of personal
merit, of virile energy, the commoner addressing commoners.  It is not
surprising that they should accept him as a guide and welcome his
doctrines with that fervor of faith called enthusiasm, and which
invariably accompanies the newborn idea as well as the first love.

   A competent judge, and an eye-witness, Mallet du Pan,[27] writes
in 1799:

   "Rousseau had a hundred times more readers among the middle and
lower classes than Voltaire.  He alone inoculated the French with the
doctrine of the sovereignty of the people and with its extremist
consequences.  It would be difficult to cite a single revolutionary
who was not transported over these anarchical theories, and who did
not burn with ardor to realize them.  That Contrat Social, the
disintegrator of societies, was the Koran of the pretentious talkers
of 1789, of the Jacobins of 1790, of the republicans of 1791, and of
the most atrocious of the madmen.  .  .  .  I heard Marat in 1788 read
and comment on the Contrat Social in the public streets to the
applause of an enthusiastic auditory."

   The same year, in an immense throng filling the great hall of
the Palais de Justice, Lacretelle hears that same book quoted, its
dogmas put forward by the clerks of la Bazoche, "by members of the
bar,[28] by young lawyers, by the ordinary lettered classes swarming
with new-fledged specialist in public law." Hundreds of details show
us that it is in every hand like a catechism.  In 1784[29] certain
magistrates' sons, on taking their first lesson in jurisprudence of an
assistant professor, M. Saveste, have the "Contrat Social" placed in
their hands as a manual.  Those who find this new political geometry
too difficult learn at least its axioms, and if these repel them they
discover at least their palpable consequences, so many handy
comparisons, the trifling common practice in the literature in vogue,
whether drama, history, or romance[30].  Through the "Eloges" by
Thomas, the pastorals of Bernadin de Saint-Pierre, the compilation of
Raynal, the comedies of Beaumarchais and even the "Young Anarcharsis"
and the literature of the resuscitated Greek and Roman antiquity, the
dogmas of equality and liberty infiltrate and penetrate the class able
to read[31].  "A few days ago," says Métra,[32] "a dinner of forty
ecclesiastics from the country took place at the house of curate of
Orangis, five leagues from Paris.  At the dessert, and in the truth
which came out over their wine, they all admitted that they came to
Paris to see the 'Marriage of Figaro.' .  .  Up to the present time it
seems as if comic authors intended to make sport for the great at the
expense of the little, but here, on the contrary, it is the little who
laugh at the expense of the great." Hence the success of the piece.
--   Hence a steward of a chateau has found a Raynal in the library,
the furious declamation of which so delights him that he can repeat it
thirty years later without stumbling, or a sergeant in the French
guards embroiders waistcoats during the night to earn the money with
which to purchase the latest books.   --   After the gallant picture
of the boudoir comes the austere and patriotic picture; "Belisarious"
and the "Horatii" of David reflect the new attitude both of the public
and of the studios[33] The spirit is that of Rousseau, "the republican
spirit;"[34] the entire middle class, artists, employees, curates,
physicians, attorneys, advocates, the lettered and the journalists,
all are won over to it; and it is fed by the worst as well as the best
passions, ambition, envy, desire for freedom, zeal for the public
welfare and the consciousness of right.



   V.   REVOLUTIONARY PASSIONS.

   Its effects therein.  - The formation of revolutionary passions.
- Leveling instincts.  - The craving for dominion.  - The Third-Estate
decides and constitutes the nation.  - Chimeras, ignorance,
exaltation.

   All these passions intensify each other.  There is nothing like
a wrong to quicken the sentiment of justice.  There is nothing like
the sentiment of justice to quicken the injury proceeding from a
wrong[35].  The Third-Estate, considering itself deprived of the place
to which it is entitled, finds itself uncomfortable in the place it
occupies and, accordingly, suffers through a thousand petty grievances
it would not, formerly, have noticed.  On discovering that he is a
citizen a man is irritated at being treated as a subject, no one
accepting an inferior position alongside of one of whom he believes
himself the equal.  Hence, during a period of twenty years, the
ancient régime while attempting to grow easier, appear to be still
more burdensome, and its pinpricks exasperate as if they were so many
wounds.  Countless instances might be quoted instead of one.   --  At
the theater in Grenoble, Barnave,[36] a child, is with his mother in a
box which the Duc de Tonnerre, governor of the province, had assigned
to one of his satellites.  The manager of the theater, and next an
officer of the guard, request Madame Barnave to withdraw.  She
refuses, whereupon the governor orders four fusiliers to force her
out.  The audience in the stalls had already taken the matter up, and
violence was feared, when M. Barnave, advised of the affront, entered
and led his wife away, exclaiming aloud, "I leave by order of the
governor." The indignant public, all the bourgeoisie, agreed among
themselves not to enter the theater again without an apology being
made; the theater, in fact, remaining empty several months, until
Madame Barnave consented to reappear there.  This outrage afterwards
recurred to the future deputy, and he then swore "to elevate the caste
to which he belonged out of the humiliation to which it seemed
condemned." In like manner Lacroix, the future member of the
Convention,[37] on leaving a theater, and jostled by a gentleman who
was giving his arm to a lady, utters a loud complaint.  "Who are you?
" says the person.  Still the provincial, he is simple enough to give
his name, surname, and qualifications in full.  "Very well," says the
other man, "good for you  --  I am the Comte de Chabannes, and I am in
a hurry," saying which, "laughing heartily," he jumps into his
vehicle.  "Ah, sir, exclaimed Lacroix, still much excited by his
misadventure, "pride and prejudice establish an awful gulf between man
and man !" We may rest assured that, with Marat, a veterinary surgeon
in the Comte d'Artois's stables, with Robespierre, a protégé of the
bishop of Arras, with Danton, an insignificant lawyer in Mery-sur-
Seine, and with many others beside, self-esteem, in frequent
encounters, bled in the same fashion.  The concentrated bitterness
with which Madame Roland's memoirs are imbued has no other cause.
"She could not forgive society[38] for the inferior position she had
so long occupied in it."[39] Thanks to Rousseau, vanity, so natural to
man, and especially sensitive with a Frenchman, becomes still more
sensitive.  The slightest discrimination, a tone of the voice, seems a
mark of disdain.  "One day,[40] on alluding, before the minister of
war, to a general officer who had obtained his rank through his merit,
he exclaimed, 'Oh, yes, an officer of luck.' This expression, being
repeated and commented on, does much mischief." In vain do the
grandees show their condescending spirit, "welcoming with equal
kindness and gentleness all who are presented to them." In the mansion
of the Due de Penthièvre the nobles eat at the table of the master of
the house, the commoners dine with his first gentleman and only enter
the drawing room when coffee is served.  There they find "in full
force and with a superior tone" the others who had the honor of dining
with His Highness, and "who do not fail to salute the new arrivals
with an obliging civility indicating patronage."[41] No more is
required; in vain does the Duke "carry his attentions to an extreme,"
Beugnot, so pliable, has no desire to return.  They bear them ill-
will, not only on account of their slight bows but again on account of
their over-politeness.  Champfort acrimoniously relates that
d'Alembert, at the height of his reputation, being in Madame du
Deffant's drawing room with President Hénault and M. de Pont-de-Veyle,
a physician enters named Fournier, and he, addressing Madame du
Deffant, says, "Madame, I have the honor of presenting you with my
very humble respects;'' turning to President Hénault, "I have the
honor to be your obedient servant," and then to M. de Pont-de-Veyle,
"Sir, your most obedient," and to d'Alembert, "Good day, sir."[42] To
a rebellious heart everything is an object of resentment.  The Third-
Estate, following Rousseau's example, cherishes ill-feeling against
the nobles for what they do, and yet again, for what they are, for
their luxury, their elegance, their insincerity, their refined and
brilliant behavior.  Champfort is embittered against them on account
of the polite attentions with which they overwhelm him.  Sieyès bears
them a grudge on account of a promised abbey which he did not obtain.
Each individual, besides the general grievances, has his personal
grievance.  Their coolness, like their familiarity, attentions and
inattentions, is an offense, and, under these millions of needle-
thrusts, real or imaginary, the mind gets to be full of gall.  In
1789, it is full to overflowing.

    "The most honorable title of the French nobility," writes
Champfort, "is a direct descent from some 30,000 armed, helmeted,
armletted and armored men who, on heavy horses sheathed in armor, trod
under foot 8 or 10 millions of naked men, the ancestors of the actual
nation.  Behold these well-established claims to the respect and
affection of their descendants! And, to complete the respectability of
this nobility, it is recruited and regenerated by the adoption of
those who have acquired fortune by plundering the cabins of the poor
who are unable to pay its impositions."[43]  --

    "Why should not the Third-Estate send back," says Sieyès, "into
the forests of Franconia every family that maintains its absurd
pretension of having sprung from the loins of a race of conquerors,
and of having succeeded to the rights of conquest? [44]  I can well
imagine, were there no police, every Cartouche[45] firmly establishing
himself on the high-road  --  would that give him a right to levy
toll? Suppose him to sell a monopoly of this kind, once common enough,
to an honest successor, would the right become any more respectable in
the hands of the purchaser? .  .  .  Every privilege, in its nature,
is unjust, odious, and against the social compact.  The blood boils at
the thought of its ever having been possible to legally consecrate
down to the eighteenth century the abominable fruits of an abominable
feudal system.  .  .  .  The caste of nobles is really a population
apart, a fraudulent population, however, which, for lack of
serviceable faculties, and unable to exist alone, fastens itself upon
a living nation, like the vegetable tumors that support themselves on
the sap of the plants to which they are a burden, and which wither
beneath the load." -- They suck all, everything being for them.
"Every branch of the executive power has fallen into the hands of this
caste, which staffed (already) the church, the robe and the sword.  A
sort of confraternity or joint paternity leads the nobles each to
prefer the other and all to the rest of the nation.  .  .  .  The
Court reigns, and not the monarch.  The Court creates and distributes
offices.  And what is the Court but the head of this vast aristocracy
that covers all parts of France, and which, through its members,
attains to and exercises everywhere whatever is requisite in all
branches of the public administration?"  -- Let us put an end to "this
social crime, this long parricide which one class does itself the
honor to commit daily against the others.  .  .  .  Ask no longer what
place the privileged shall occupy in the social order; it is simply
asking what place in a sick man's body must be assigned to a malignant
ulcer that is undermining and tormenting it .  .  .  to the loathsome
disease that is consuming the living flesh." --  The solution is self-
evident: let us eradicate the ulcer, or at least sweep away the
vermin.  The Third-Estate, in itself and by itself, is "a complete
nation," requiring no organ, needing no aid to subsist or to govern
itself, and which will recover its health on ridding itself of the
parasites infesting its skin.

    "What is the Third-Estate?" says Sieyès, "everything.  What,
thus far, is it in the political body?[46]  Nothing.  What does it
demand? To become something."

   Not something but actually everything.  Its political ambition
is as great as its social ambition, and it aspires to authority as
well as to equality.  If privileges are an evil that of the king is
the worst for it is the greatest, and human dignity, wounded by the
prerogative of the noble, perishes under the absolutism of the king.
Of little consequence is it that he scarcely uses it, and that his
government, deferential to public opinion, is that of a hesitating and
indulgent parent.  Emancipated from real despotism, the Third-Estate
becomes excited against possible despotism, imagining itself in
slavery in consenting to remain subject.  A proud spirit has recovered
itself, become erect, and, the better to secure its rights, is going
to claim all rights.  To the people who since antiquity has been
subject to masters, it is so sweet, so intoxicating to put themselves
in their places, to put the former masters in their place, to say to
himself, they are my representatives, to regard himself a member of
the sovereign power, king of France in his individual sphere, the sole
legitimate author of all rights and of all functions!  --   In
conformity with the doctrines of Rousseau the registers of the Third-
Estate unanimously insist on a constitution for France; none exists,
or at least the one she possesses is of no value.  Thus far "the
conditions of the social compact have been ignored;"[47] now that they
have been discovered they must be written out.  To say, with the
nobles according to Montesquieu, that the constitution exists, that
its great features need not be changed, that it is necessary only to
reform abuses, that the States-General exercise only limited power,
that they are incompetent to substitute another regime for the
monarchy, is not true.  Tacitly or expressly, the Third-Estate refuses
to restrict its mandate and allows no barriers to be interposed
against it.  It requires its deputies accordingly to vote "not by
orders but each by himself and conjointly."   --  "In case the
deputies of the clergy or of the nobility should refuse to deliberate
in common and individually, the deputies of the Third-Estate,
representing twenty-four millions of men, able and obliged to declare
itself the National Assembly not-withstanding the scission of the
representation of 400,000 persons, will propose to the King in concert
with those among the Clergy and the Nobility disposed to join them,
their assistance in providing for the necessities of the State, and
the taxes thus assented to shall be apportioned among all the subjects
of the king without distinction."[48]   --  Do not object that a
people thus mutilated becomes a mere crowd, that leaders cannot be
improvised, that it is difficult to dispense with natural guides,
that, considering all things, this Clergy and this Nobility still form
a select group, that two-fifths of the soil is in their hands, that
one-half of the intelligent and cultivated class of men are in their
ranks, that they are exceedingly well-disposed and that old historic
bodies have always afforded to liberal constitutions their best
supports.  According to the principle enunciated by Rousseau we are
not to value men but to count them.  In politics numbers only are
respectable; neither birth, nor property, nor function, nor capacity,
is a title to be considered; high or low, ignorant or learned, a
general, a soldier, or a hod-carrier, each individual of the social
army is a unit provided with a vote; wherever a majority is found
there is the right.  Hence, the Third-Estate puts forth its right as
incontestable, and, in its turn, it proclaims with Louis XIV, "I am
the State."

   This principle once admitted or enforced, they thought, all will
go well.

    "It seemed," says an eye-witness,[49] "as if we were about to
be governed by men of the golden age.  This free, just and wise
people, always in harmony with itself, always clear-sighted in
choosing its ministers, moderate in the use of its strength and power,
never could be led away, never deceived, never under the dominion of;
or enslaved by, the authority which it confided.  Its will would
fashion the laws and the law would constitute its happiness."

   The nation is to be regenerated, a phrase found in all writings
and in every mouth.  At Nangis, Arthur Young finds this the sub-stance
of political conversation[50].  The chaplain of a regiment, a curate
in the vicinity, keeps fast hold of it; as to knowing what it means
that is another matter.  It is impossible to find anything out through
explanations of it otherwise than "a theoretic perfection of
government, questionable in its origin, hazardous in its progress, and
visionary in its end." On the Englishman proposing to them the British
constitution as a model they "hold it cheap in respect of liberty" and
greet it with a smile; it is, especially, not in conformity with "the
principles." And observe that we are at the residence of a grand
seignior, in a circle of enlightened men.  At Riom, at the election
assemblies,[51] Malouet finds "persons of an ordinary stamp,
practitioners, petty lawyers, with no experience of public business,
quoting the 'Contrat Social,' vehemently declaiming against tyranny,
and each proposing his own constitution." Most of them are without any
knowledge whatever, mere traffickers in chicane; the best instructed
entertain mere schoolboy ideas of politics.  In the colleges of the
University no history is taught[52].  "The name of Henry IV., says
Lavalette, was not once uttered during my eight years of study, and,
at seventeen years of age, I was still ignorant of the epoch and the
mode of the establishment of the Bourbons on the throne." The stock
they carry away with them consists wholly, as with Camille Desmoulins,
of scraps of Latin, entering the world with brains stuffed with
"republican maxims," excited by souvenirs of Rome and Sparta, and
"penetrated with profound contempt for monarchical governments."
Subsequently, at the law school, they learn something about legal
abstractions, or else learn nothing.  In the lecture-courses at Paris
there are no students; the professor delivers his lecture to copyists
who sell their copy-books.  If a pupil should attend himself and take
notes he would be regarded with suspicion; he would be charged with
trying to deprive the copyists of the means of earning their living.
A diploma, consequently, is worthless.  At Bourges one is obtainable
in six months; if the young man succeeds in comprehending the law it
is through later practice and familiarity with it.   --  Of foreign
laws and institutions there is not the least knowledge, scarcely even
a vague or false notion of them.  Malouet himself entertains a meager
idea of the English Parliament, while many, with respect to
ceremonial, imagine it a copy of the Parliament of France.   --  The
mechanism of free constitutions, or the conditions of effective
liberty, that is too complicated a question.  Montesquieu, save in the
great magisterial families, is antiquated for twenty years past.  Of
what avail are studies of ancient France? "What is the result of so
much and such profound research? Laborious conjecture and reasons for
doubting."[53] It is much more convenient to start with the rights of
man and to deduce the consequences.  Schoolboy logic suffices for that
to which collegiate rhetoric supplies the tirades.   --  In this great
void of enlightenment the vague terms of liberty, equality and the
sovereignty of the people, the glowing expressions of Rousseau and his
successors, all these new axioms, blaze up like burning coals,
discharging clouds of smoke and intoxicating vapor.  High-sounding and
vague language is interposed between the mind and objects around it;
all outlines are confused and the vertigo begins.  Never to the same
extent have men lost the purport of outward things.  Never have they
been at once more blind and more chimerical.  Never has their
disturbed reason rendered them more tranquil concerning real danger
and created more alarm at imaginary danger.  Strangers with cool blood
and who witness the spectacle, Mallet du Pan, Dumont of Geneva, Arthur
Young, Jefferson, Gouverneur Morris, write that the French are insane.
Morris, in this universal delirium, can mention to Washington but one
sane mind, that of Marmontel, and Marmontel speaks in the same style
as Morris.  At the preliminary meetings of the clubs, and at the
assemblies of electors, he is the only one who opposes unreasonable
propositions.  Surrounding him are none but the excited, the exalted
about nothing, even to grotesqueness[54].  In every act of the
established régime, in every administrative measure, "in all police
regulations, in all financial decrees, in all the graduated
authorities on which public order and tranquility depend, there was
naught in which they did not find an aspect of tyranny.  .  .  .  On
the walls and barriers of Paris being referred to, these were
denounced as enclosures for deer and derogatory to man."  --

    "I saw," says one of these orators, "at the barrier Saint-
Victor, sculptured on one of the pillars  --  would you believe it?  -
-  an enormous lion's head, with open jaws vomiting forth chains as a
menace to those who passed it.  Could a more horrible emblem of
slavery and of despotism be imagined!"  --  "The orator himself
imitates the roar of the lion.  The listeners were all excited by it
and I, who passed the barrier Saint-Victor so often, was surprised
that this horrible image had not struck me.  That very day I examined
it closely and, on the pilaster, I found only a small buckler
suspended as an ornament by a little chain attached by the sculptor to
a little lion's mouth, like those we see serving as door-knockers or
as water-cocks."  --  Perverted sensations and delirious conceptions
of this kind would be regarded by physicians as the symptoms of mental
derangement, and we are only in the early months of the year 1789!  --
In such excitable and over-excited brains the powerful fascination of
words is about to create phantoms, some of them hideous, the
aristocrat and the tyrant, and others adorable, the friend of the
people and the incorruptible patriot, so many disproportionate,
imaginary figures, but which will replace actual living persons, and
which the maniac is to overwhelm with his praise or pursue with his
fury.


   VI.   SUMMARY

    Thus does the philosophy of the eighteenth century descend
among the people and propagate itself.  Ideas, on the first story of
the house, in handsome gilded rooms, serve only as an evening
illumination, as drawing room explosives and pleasing Bengal lights,
with which people amuse themselves, and then laughingly throw from the
windows into the street.  Collected together in the story below and on
the ground floor, transported to shops, to warehouses and into
business cabinets, they find combustible material, piles of wood a
long time accumulated, and here do the flames enkindle.  The
conflagration seems to have already begun, for the chimneys roar and a
ruddy light gleams through the windows; but "No," say the people
above, "those below would take care not to set the house on fire, for
they live in it as we do.  It is only a straw bonfire and a burning
chimney, and a little water will extinguish it; and, besides, these
little accidents clear the chimney and burn out the soot."

   Take care! Under the vast deep arches supporting it, in the
cellars of the house, there is a magazine of powder.

___________________________________________________________________

Notes:

[1] I have verified these sentiments myself, in the narration of
aged people deceased twenty years ago.  Cf.  manuscript memoirs of
Hardy the bookseller (analyzed by Aubertin), and the "Travels of
Arthur Young."

[2] Aubertin, ibid., 180, 362.

[3] Voltaire, "Siècle de Louis XV," ch.  XXXI; "Siècle de Louis
XIV," ch.  XXX.  "Industry increases every day.  To see the private
display, the prodigious number of pleasant dwellings erected in Paris
and in the provinces, the numerous equipages, the conveniences, the
acquisitions comprehended in the term luxe, one might suppose that
opulence was twenty times greater than it formerly was.  All this is
the result of ingenuity, much more than of wealth.  .  .  The middle
class has become wealthy by industry.  .  .  .  Commercial gains have
augmented.  The opulence of the great is less than it was formerly and
much larger among the middle class, the distance between men even
being lessened by it.  Formerly the inferior class had no resource but
to serve their superiors; nowadays industry has opened up a thousand
roads unknown a hundred years ago."

[4] John Law (Edinbourgh 1672- dead in Venice 1729) Scotch
financier, who founded a bank in Paris issuing paper money whose value
depended upon confidence and credit.  He had to flee France when his
system collapsed and died in misery.  (SR.)

[5] Arthur Young, II.  360, 373.

[6] De Tocqueville, 255.

[7] Aubertin, 482.

[8] Roux and Buchez, "Histoire parlementaire." Extracted from the
accounts made up by the comptrollers-general, I.  175, 205.  - The
report by Necker, I.  376.  To the 206,000,000 must be added
15,800,000 for expenses and interest on advances.

[9] Compare this to the situation in year 1999 where irresponsible
democratic governments sell enormous fortunes in the form of bonds to
the popular pension funds, fortunes which they expect that the next
generation shall repay.  (SR.)

[10] Roux and Buchez, I.  190.  "Rapport," M. de Calonne.

[11] Champfort, p.  105.

[12] De Tocqueville, 261.

[13] D'Argenson, April 12, 1752, February 11, 1752, July 24, 1753,
December 7, 1753.  - Archives nationales, O1, 738.

[14] Characters in Molière's comedies.  - TR.

[15] De Ségur.  I.  17.

[16] Lucas de Montigny, Letter of the Marquis de Mirabeau, March
23, 1783.

[17] Mme.  Vigée-Lebrun, I.  269, 231.  (The domestic establishment
of two farmers-general, M. de Verdun, at Colombes, and M. de St.
James, at Neuilly).  - A superior type of the bourgeois and of the
merchant has already been put on the stage by Sedaine in "Le
Philosophe sans le Savoir."

[18] John Andrews, "A comparative view," etc.  p.  58.

[19] De Tilly, "Mémoires," I.  31.

[20] Goffroy, "Gustave III," letter of Mme.  Staël (August, 1786).

[21] Mme.  de Genlis, "Adele et Théodore" (1782), I.  312.   --
Already in 1762, Bachaumont mentions several pieces written by grand
seigniors, such as "Clytemnestre," by the Comte de Lauraguais;
"Alexandre," by the Chevalier de Fénélon; "Don Carlos," by the Marquis
de Ximènès.

[22] Champfort, 119.

[23] De Vaublanc, I.  117.  - Beugnot, "Mémoires," (the first and
second passages relating to society at the domiciles of M. de Brienne,
and the Duc de Penthièvre.)

[24] Barbier, II, 16; III.  255 (May, 1751).  "The king is robbed
by all the seigniors around him, especially on his journeys to his
different châteaux, which are frequent."  --  And September, 1750.   -
-  Cf.  Aubertin, 291, 415 ("Mémoires," manuscript by Hardy).

[25] Treaties of Paris and Hubersbourg, 1763.  - The trial of La
Chalotais, 1765.  - Bankruptcy of Terray, 1770.  - Destruction of the
Parliament, 1771.  - The first partition of Poland, 1772.  - Rousseau,
"Discours sur l'inégalité," 1753.  - "Héloise," 1759.  - "Emile" and
"Contrat Social," 1762.

[26] De Barante, "Tableau de la littérature française au dix-
huitième siècle," 312.

[27] "Mercure britannique," vol.  II, 360.

[28] Lacretelle, "Dix ans d'épreuves," p.  21.

[29] "Memoires," by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de
France.  in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893.

[30] "Le Compère Mathieu," by Dulaurens (1766).  "Our sufferings
are due to the way in which we are brought up, namely, the state of
society in which we are born.  Now that state being the source of all
our ills its dissolution must become that of all our good."

[31] The "Tableau de Paris," by Mercier (12 vols.), is the
completest and most exact portrayal of the ideas and aspirations of
the middle class from 1781 to 1788.

[32] "Correspondence," by Métra, XVII, 87 (August 20, 1784).

[33] "Belisarious," is from 1780, and the "Oath of the Horatii,"
from 1783.

[34] Geffroy, "Gustave II et la cour de France." "Paris, with its
republican spirit, generally applauds whatever fails at
Fontainebleau." (A letter by Madame de Staël, Sept.  17, 1786).

[35] Taine uses the French term "passe-droit", meaning both passing
over, slight, unjust promotion over the heads of others, a special
favour, or privilege.  (SR.)

[36] Sainte-Beuve, "Causeries du Lundi," II.  24, in the article on
Barnave.

[37] Dr Tilly, "Mémoires," I.  243.

[38] The words of Fontanes, who knew her and admired her.  (Sainte-
Beuve, "Nouveaux Lundis," VIII.  221).

[39] "Mémoires de Madame Roland," passim.  At fourteen years of
age, on being introduced to Mme.  de Boismorel, she is hurt at hearing
her grandmother addressed "Mademoiselle."   --  Shortly after this,
she says: "I could not concoal from myself that I was of more
consequence than Mlle.  d'Hannaches, whose sixty years and her
genealogy did not enable her to write a common-sense letter or one
that was legible."   --  About the same epoch she passes a week at
Versailles with a servant of the Dauphine, and tells her mother, "A
few days more and I shall so detest these people that I shall not know
how to suppress my hatred of them."   --  "What injury have they done
you?" she inquired.  "It is the feeling of injustice and the constant
contemplation of absurdity!"  --   At the château of Fontenay where
she is invited to dine, she and her mother are made to dine in the
servants' room, etc.   --   In 1818, in a small town in the north, the
Comte de  --   dining with a bourgeois sub-prefect and placed by the
side of the mistress of the house, says to her, on accepting the soup,
'Thanks, sweetheart,' But the Revolution has given the lower class
bourgeoisie the courage to defend themselves tooth and nail so that, a
moment later, she addresses him, with one of her sweetest smiles,
'Will you take some chicken, my love?' (The French expression 'mon
coeur' means both sweetheart and my love.  SR.)

[40] De Vaublanc, I.  153.

[41] Beugnot, "Mémoires," I.  77.

[42] Champfort, 16.   --  "Who would believe it! Not taxation, nor
lettres-de-cachet, nor the abuses of power, nor the vexations of
intendants, and the ruinous delays of justice have provoked the ire of
the nation, but their prejudices against the nobility towards which it
has shown the greatest hatred.  This evidently proves that the
bourgeoisie, the men of letters, the financial class, in short all
who envy the nobles have excited against these the inferior class in
the towns and among the rural peasantry." (Rivarol, "Mémoires.")

[43] Champfort, 335.

[44] Sieyès, "Qu'est ce que le Tiers?" 17, 41, 139, 166.

[45] Cartouche (Luis Dominique) (Paris, 1693 - id.  1721).
Notorious French bandit, leader of a gang of thieves.  He died broken
alive on the wheel.  (SR.)

[46] "The nobility, say the nobles, is an intermediary between the
king and the people.  Yes, as the hound is an intermediary between the
hunter and the hare." (Champfort).

[47] Prud'homme, III.  2.  ("The Third-Estate of Nivernais,"
passim.) Cf, on the other hand, the registers of the nobility of Bugey
and of Alençon.

[48] Prud'homme, ibid.., Cahiers of the Third-Estates of Dijon,
Dax, Bayonne, Saint-Sévère, Rennes, etc.

[49] Marmontel, "Mémoires," II.  247.

[50] Arthur Young, I.  222.

[51] Malouet, "Mémoires," I.  279.

[52] De Lavalette, I.  7.   --  "Souvenirs", by PASQUIER (Etienne-
Dennis, duc), chancelier de France.  in VI volumes, Librarie Plon,
Paris 1893.    -- .  Cf.  Brissot, Mémoires, I.

[53] Prudhomme, "Résumé des cahiers," the "preface," by J.  J.
Rousseau.

[54] Marmontel, II.  245.





BOOK FIFTH.  THE PEOPLE

CHAPTER I.  HARDSHIPS.

I.   Privations.

Under Louis XIV.  - Under Louis XV.  - Under Louis XVI.

  La Bruyère wrote, just a century before 1789,[1]:

"Certain savage-looking animals, male and female, are seen in the
country, black, livid and sunburned, and attached to the soil which
they dig and grub with invincible stubbornness.  They seem capable of
speech, and, when they stand erect, they display a human face.  They
are, in fact, men.  They retire at night into their dens where they
live on black bread, water and roots.  They spare other human beings
the trouble of sowing, plowing and harvesting, and thus should not be
in want of the bread they have planted."

They are, however, in want during the twenty-five years after this,
and die in droves.  I estimate that in 1715 more than one-third of the
population,[2] six millions, perish with hunger and of destitution.
This description is, in respect of the first quarter of the century
preceding the Revolution, far from being too vivid, it is rather too
weak; we shall see that it, during more than half a century, up to the
death of Louis XV.  is exact; so that instead of weakening any of its
details, they should be strengthened.

"In 1725," says Saint-Simon, "with the profusion of Strasbourg and
Chantilly, the people, in Normandy, live on the grass of the fields.
The first king in Europe could not be a great king if it was not for
all the beggars and the poor-houses full of dying from whom all had
been taken even though it was peace-time.[3]

In the most prosperous days of Fleury and in the finest region in
France, the peasant hides "his wine on account of the excise and his
bread on account of the taille," convinced "that he is a lost man if
any doubt exists of his dying of starvation."[4] In 1739 d'Argenson
writes in his journal[5]:

"The famine has just caused three insurrections in the provinces,
at Ruffec, at Caen, and at Chinon.  Women carrying their bread with
them have been assassinated on the highways.  .  .  M. le Duc d'Orléans
brought to the Council the other day a piece of bread, and placed it
on the table before the king 'Sire,' said he, 'there is the bread on
which your subjects now feed themselves.'" "In my own canton of
Touraine men have been eating herbage more than a year." Misery finds
company on all sides.  "It is talked about at Versailles more than
ever.  The king interrogated the bishop of Chartres on the condition of
his people; he replied that 'the famine and the morality were such
that men ate grass like sheep and died like so many flies.'"

 In 1740,[6]  Massillon, bishop of Clermont-Ferrand, writes to
Fleury:

"The people of the rural districts are living in frightful
destitution, without beds, without furniture; the majority, for half
the year, even lack barley and oat bread which is their sole food, and
which they are compelled to take out of their own and their children's
mouths to pay the taxes.  It pains me to see this sad spectacle every
year on my visits.  The Negroes of our colonies are, in this respect,
infinitely better off; for, while working, they are fed and clothed
along with their wives and children, while our peasantry, the most
laborious in the kingdom, cannot, with the hardest and most devoted
labor, earn bread for themselves and their families, and at the same
time pay their charges." In 1740[7] at Lille, the people rebel against
the export of grain.  "An intendant informs me that the misery
increases from hour to hour, the slightest danger to the crops
resulting in this for three years past.  .  .  .Flanders, especially, is
greatly embarrassed; there is nothing to live on until the harvesting,
which will not take place for two months.  The provinces the best off
are not able to help the others.  Each bourgeois in each town is
obliged to feed one or two poor persons and provide them with fourteen
pounds of bread per week.  In the little town of Chatellerault, (of
4,000 inhabitants), 1800 poor, this winter, are in that situation.  .  .
.  The poor outnumber those able to live without begging .  .  .  while
prosecutions for unpaid dues are carried on with unexampled rigor.  The
clothes of the poor, their last measure of flour and the latches on
their doors are seized, etc.  ..  .  The abbess of Jouarre told me
yesterday that, in her canton, in Brie, most of the land had not been
planted." It is not surprising that the famine spreads even to Paris.
"Fears are entertained of next Wednesday.  There is no more bread in
Paris, except that of the damaged flour which is brought in and which
burns (when baking).  The mills are working day and night at
Belleville, regrinding old damaged flour.  The people are ready to
rebel; bread goes up a sol a day; no merchant dares, or is disposed,
to bring in his wheat.  The market on Wednesday was almost in a state
of revolt, there being no bread in it after seven o'clock in the
morning.  .  .  .  The poor creatures at Bicêtre prison were put on short
rations, three quarterons (twelve ounces), being reduced to only half
a pound.  A rebellion broke out and they forced the guards.  Numbers
escaped and they have inundated Paris.  The watch, with the police of
the neighborhood, were called out, and an attack was made on these
poor wretches with bayonet and sword.  About fifty of them were left on
the ground; the revolt was not suppressed yesterday morning."

Ten years later the evil is greater.[8]

"In the country around me, ten leagues from Paris, I find increased
privation and constant complaints.  What must it be in our wretched
provinces in the interior of the kingdom? .  .  .  My curate tells me
that eight families, supporting themselves on their labor when I left,
are now begging their bread.  There is no work to be had.  The wealthy
are economizing like the poor.  And with all this the taille is exacted
with military severity.  The collectors, with their officers,
accompanied by locksmiths, force open the doors and carry off and sell
furniture for one-quarter of its value, the expenses exceeding the
amount of the tax .  .  .  "   -   "I am at this moment on my estates in
Touraine.  I encounter nothing but frightful privations; the melancholy
sentiment of suffering no longer prevails with the poor inhabitants,
but rather one of utter despair; they desire death only, and avoid
increase.  .  .  .  It is estimated that one-quarter of the working-days
of the year go to the corvées, the laborers feeding themselves, and
with what? .  .  .  I see poor people dying of destitution.  They are paid
fifteen sous a day, equal to a crown, for their load.  Whole villages
are either ruined or broken up, and none of the households recover.  .
.  .  Judging by what my neighbors tell me the inhabitants have
diminished one-third.  .  .  .  The daily laborers are all leaving and
taking refuge in the small towns.  In many villages everybody leaves.  I
have several parishes in which the taille for three years is due, the
proceedings for its collection always going on.  .  .  .  The receivers of
the taille and of the taxes add one-half each year in expenses above
the tax.  .  .  .  An assessor, on coming to the village where I have my
country-house, states that the taille this year will be much
increased; he noticed that the peasants here were fatter than
elsewhere; that they had chicken feathers before their doors, and that
the living here must be good, everybody doing well, etc.   -  This is
the cause of the peasant's discouragement, and likewise the cause of
misfortune throughout the kingdom."  -  "In the country where I am
staying I hear that marriage is declining and that the population is
decreasing on all sides.  In my parish, with a few fire-sides, there
are more than thirty single persons, male and female, old enough to
marry and none of them considering it.  On being urged to marry they
all reply alike that it is not worth while to bring unfortunate beings
like themselves into the world.  I have myself tried to induce some of
the women to marry by offering them assistance, but they all reason in
this way as if they had consulted together."[9]  -  "One of my curates
sends me word that, although he is the oldest in the province of
Touraine, and has seen many things, including excessively high prices
for wheat, he remembers no misery so great as that of this year, even
in 1709.  .  .  .  Some of the seigniors of Touraine inform me that, being
desirous of setting the inhabitants to work by the day, they found
very few of them, and these so weak that they were unable to use their
hands."

Those who are able to leave, go.

 "A person from Languedoc tells me of vast numbers of peasants
deserting that province and taking refuge in Piedmont, Savoy, and
Spain, tormented and frightened by the measures resorted to in
collecting tithes.  .  .  .  The extortioners sell everything and imprison
everybody as if prisoners of war, and even with more avidity and
malice, in order to gain something themselves."  -  "I met an
intendant of one of the finest provinces in the kingdom, who told me
that no more farmers could be found there; that parents preferred to
send their children to the towns; that living in the surrounding
country was daily becoming more horrible to the inhabitants.  .  .  .  A
man, well-informed in financial matters, told me that over two hundred
families in Normandy had left this year, fearing the collections in
their villages."  -  At Paris, "the streets swarm with beggars.  One
cannot stop before a door without a dozen mendicants besetting him
with their importunities.  They are said to be people from the country
who, unable to endure the persecutions they have to undergo, take
refuge in the cities .  .  .  preferring begging to labor."  -  And yet
the people of the cities are not much better off.  "An officer of a
company in garrison at Mezieres tells me that the poverty of that
place is so great that, after the officers had dined in the inns, the
people rush in and pillage the remnants."  -  "There are more than
12,000 begging workmen in Rouen, quite as many in Tours, etc.  More
than 20,000 of these workmen are estimated as having left the kingdom
in three months for Spain, Germany, etc.  At Lyons 20,000 workers in
silk are watched and kept in sight for fear of their going abroad." At
Rouen,[10] and in Normandy, "those in easy circumstances find it
difficult to get bread, the bulk of the people being entirely without
it, and, to ward off starvation, providing themselves with food
otherwise repulsive to human beings."  -  "Even at Paris," writes
d'Argenson,[11] "I learn that on the day M. le Dauphin and Mme.  la
Dauphine went to Notre Dame, on passing the bridge of the Tournelle,
more than 2,000 women assembled in that quarter crying out, 'Give us
bread, or we shall die of hunger.' .  .  .  A vicar of the parish of
Saint-Marguerite affirms that over eight hundred persons died in the
Faubourg St.  Antoine between January 20th and February 20th; that the
poor expire with cold and hunger in their garrets, and that the
priests, arriving too late, see them expire without any possible
relief."

Were I to enumerate the riots, the sedition of the famished, and
the pillaging of storehouses, I should never end; these are the
convulsive twitching of exhaustion; the people have fasted as long as
possible, and instinct, at last, rebels.  In 1747,[12] "extensive
bread-riots occur in Toulouse, and in Guyenne they take place on every
market-day." In 1750, from 6 to 7,000 men gather in Bearn behind a
river to resist the clerks; two companies of the Artois regiment fire
on the rebels and kill a dozen of them.  In 1752, a sedition at Rouen
and in its neighborhood lasts three days; in Dauphiny and in Auvergne
riotous villagers force open the grain warehouses and take away wheat
at their own price; the same year, at Arles, 2,000 armed peasants
demand bread at the town-hall and are dispersed by the soldiers.  In
one province alone, that of Normandy, I find insurrections in 1725, in
1737, in 1739, in 1752, in 1764, 1765, 1766, 1767 and I768,[13] and
always on account of bread.

"Entire hamlets," writes the Parliament, "being without the
necessities of life, hunger compels them to resort to the food of
brutes.  .  .  .  Two days more and Rouen will be without provisions,
without grain, without bread."

Accordingly, the last riot is terrible; on this occasion, the
populace, again masters of the town for three days, pillage the public
granaries and the stores of all the communities.  -  Up to the last
and even later, in 1770 at Rheims, in 1775 at Dijon, at Versailles, at
St.  Germain, at Pontoise and at Paris, in 1772 at Poitiers, in 1785 at
Aix in Provence, in 1788 and 1789 in Paris and throughout France,
similar eruptions are visible.[14]   -  Undoubtedly the government
under Louis XVI is milder; the intendants are more humane, the
administration is less rigid, the taille becomes less unequal, and the
corvée is less onerous through its transformation, in short, misery
has diminished, and yet this is greater than human nature can bear.

Examine administrative correspondence for the last thirty years
preceding the Revolution.  Countless statements reveal excessive
suffering, even when not terminating in fury.  Life to a man of the
lower class, to an artisan, or workman, subsisting on the labor of his
own hands, is evidently precarious; he obtains simply enough to keep
him from starvation and he does not always get that[15].  Here, in four
districts, "the inhabitants live only on buckwheat," and for five
years, the apple crop having failed, they drink only water.  There, in
a country of vine-yards,[16] "the wine-growers each year are reduced,
for the most part, to begging their bread during the dull season."
Elsewhere, several of the day-laborers and mechanics, obliged to sell
their effects and household goods, die of the cold; insufficient and
unhealthy food generates sickness, while, in two districts, 35,000
persons are stated to be living on alms[17].  In a remote canton the
peasants cut the grain still green and dry it in the oven, because
they are too hungry to wait.  The intendant of Poitiers writes that "as
soon as the workhouses open, a prodigious number of the poor rush to
them, in spite of the reduction of wages and of the restrictions
imposed on them in behalf of the most needy." The intendant of Bourges
notices that a great many tenant farmers have sold off their
furniture, and that "entire families pass two days without eating,"
and that in many parishes the famished stay in bed most of the day
because they suffer less.  The intendant of Orleans reports that "in
Sologne, poor widows have burned up their wooden bedsteads and others
have consumed their fruit trees," to preserve themselves from the
cold, and he adds, "nothing is exaggerated in this statement; the
cries of want cannot be expressed; the misery of the rural districts
must be seen with one's own eyes to obtain an idea of it." From Rioni,
from La Rochelle, from Limoges, from Lyons, from Montauban, from Caen,
from Alençon, from Flanders, from Moulins come similar statements by
other intendants.  One might call it the interruptions and repetitions
of a funeral knell; even in years not disastrous it is heard on all
sides.  In Burgundy, near Chatillon-sur-Seine,

"taxes, seigniorial dues, the tithes, and the expenses of
cultivation, split up the productions of the soil into thirds, leaving
nothing for the unfortunate cultivators, who would have abandoned
their fields, had not two Swiss manufacturers of calicoes settled
there and distributed about the country 40,000 francs a year in
cash."[18]

 In Auvergne, the country is depopulated daily; many of the
villages have lost, since the beginning of the century, more than one-
third of their inhabitants[19].

 "Had not steps been promptly taken to lighten the burden of a
down-trodden people," says the provincial assembly in 1787, "Auvergne
would have forever lost its population and its cultivation."

In Comminges, at the outbreak of the Revolution, certain
communities threaten to abandon their possessions, should they obtain
no relief[20].

 "It is a well-known fact," says the assembly of Haute-Guyenne, in
1784," that the lot of the most severely taxed communities is so
rigorous as to have led their proprietors frequently to abandon their
property[21].  Who is not aware of the inhabitants of Saint-Servin
having abandoned their property ten times, and of their threats to
resort again to this painful proceeding in their recourse to the
administration? Only a few years ago an abandonment of the community
of Boisse took place through the combined action of the inhabitants,
the seignior and the décimateur of that community;" and the desertion
would be still greater if the law did not forbid persons liable to the
taille abandoning over-taxed property, except by renouncing whatever
they possessed in the community.  In the Soissonais, according to the
report of the provincial assembly,[22] "misery is excessive." In
Gascony the spectacle is "heartrending." In the environs of Toul, the
cultivator, after paying his taxes, tithes and other dues, remains
empty-handed.

 "Agriculture is an occupation of steady anxiety and privation, in
which thousands of men are obliged to painfully vegetate."[23] In a
village in Normandy, "nearly all the inhabitants, not excepting the
farmers and proprietors, eat barley bread and drink water, living like
the most wretched of men, so as to provide for the payment of the
taxes with which they are overburdened." In the same province, at
Forges, "many poor creatures eat oat bread, and others bread of soaked
bran, this nourishment causing many deaths among infants."[24] People
evidently live from day to day; whenever the crop proves poor they
lack bread.  Let a frost come, a hailstorm, an inundation, and an
entire province is incapable of supporting itself until the coming
year; in many places even an ordinary winter suffices to bring on
distress.  On all sides hands are seen outstretched to the king, who is
the universal almoner.  The people may be said to resemble a man
attempting to wade through a pool with the water up to his chin, and
who, losing his footing at the slightest depression, sinks down and
drowns.  Existent charity and the fresh spirit of humanity vainly
strive to rescue them; the water has risen too high.  It must subside
to a lower level, and the pool be drawn off through some adequate
outlet.  Thus far the poor man catches breath only at intervals,
running the risk of drowning at every moment.


II.  THE PEASANTS.

The condition of the peasant during the last thirty years of the
Ancient Regime.  - His precarious subsistence.  - State of agriculture.
- Uncultivated farms.  - Poor cultivation.  - Inadequate wages.  - Lack
of comforts.

Between 1750 and 1760,[25] the idlers who eat suppers begin to
regard with compassion and alarm the laborers who go without dinners.
Why are the latter so impoverished; and by what misfortune, on a soil
as rich as that of France, do those lack bread who grow the grain? In
the first place many farms remain uncultivated, and, what is worse,
many are deserted.  According to the best observers "one-quarter of the
soil is absolutely lying waste.  .  .  .  Hundreds and hundreds of arpents
of heath and moor form extensive deserts."[26]  Let a person traverse
Anjou, Maine, Brittany, Poitou, Limousin, la Marche, Berry, Nivernais,
Bourbonnais and Auvergne, and he finds one-half of these provinces in
heaths, forming immense plains, all of which might be cultivated." In
Touraine, in Poitou and in Berry they form solitary expanses of 30,000
arpents.  In one canton alone, near Preuilly, 40,000 arpents of good
soil consist of heath.  The agricultural society of Rennes declares
that two-thirds of Brittany is lying waste.  This is not sterility but
decadence.  The régime invented by Louis XIV has produced its effect;
the soil for a century past has been reverting to a wild state.

 "We see only abandoned and ruinous chateaux; the principal towns
of the fiefs, in which the nobility formerly lived at their ease, are
all now occupied by poor tenant herdsmen whose scanty labor hardly
suffices for their subsistence, and a remnant of tax ready to
disappear through the ruin of the proprietors and the desertion of the
settlers."

 In the election district of Confolens a piece of property rented
for 2,956 livres in 1665, brings in only 900 livres in 1747.  On the
confines of la Marche and of Berry a domain which, in 166o, honorably
supported two seigniorial families is now simply a small unproductive
tenant-farm; "the traces of the furrows once made by the plow-iron
being still visible on the surrounding heaths." Sologne, once
flourishing,[27] becomes a marsh and a forest; a hundred years earlier
it produced three times the quantity of grain; two-thirds of its mills
are gone; not a vestige of its vineyards remains; "grapes have given
way to the heath." Thus abandoned by the spade and the plow, a vast
portion of the soil ceases to feed man, while the rest, poorly
cultivated, scarcely provides the simplest necessities[28].

In the first place, on the failure of a crop, this portion remains
untilled; its occupant is too poor to purchase seed; the intendant is
often obliged to distribute seed, without which the disaster of the
current year would be followed by sterility the following year[29].
Every calamity, accordingly, in these days affects the future as well
as the present; during the two years of 1784 and 1785, around
Toulouse, the drought having caused the loss of all draft animals,
many of the cultivators are obliged to let their fields lie fallow.  In
the second place, cultivation, when it does take place, is carried on
according to medieval modes.  Arthur Young, in 1789, considers that
French agriculture has not progressed beyond that of the tenth
century[30].  Except in Flanders and on the plains of Alsace, the
fields lie fallow one year out of three, and oftentimes one year out
of two.  The implements are poor; there are no plows made of iron; in
many places the plow of Virgil's time is still in use.  Cart-axles and
wheel-tires are made of wood, while a harrow often consists of the
trestle of a cart.  There are few animals and but little manure; the
capital bestowed on cultivation is three times less than that of the
present day.  The yield is slight: "our ordinary farms," says a good
observer, "taking one with another return about six times the seed
sown."[31]  In 1778, on the rich soil around Toulouse, wheat returns
about five for one, while at the present day it yields eight to one
and more.  Arthur Young estimates that, in his day, the English acre
produces twenty-eight bushels of grain, and the French acre eighteen
bushels, and that the value of the total product of the same area for
a given length of time is thirty-six pounds sterling in England and
only twenty-five in France.  As the parish roads are frightful, and
transportation often impracticable, it is clear that, in remote
cantons, where poor soil yields scarcely three times the seed sown,
food is not always obtainable.  How do they manage to live until the
next crop? This is the question always under consideration previous
to, and during, the Revolution.  I find, in manuscript correspondence,
the syndics and mayors of villages estimating the quantities for local
subsistence at so many bushels in the granaries, so many sheaves in
the barns, so many mouths to be filled, so many days to wait until

the August wheat comes in, and concluding on short supplies for
two, three and four months.  Such a state of inter-communication and of
agriculture condemns a country to periodical famines, and I venture to
state that, alongside of the small-pox which out of eight deaths
causes one, another endemic disease exists, as prevalent and as
destructive, and this disease is starvation.

We can easily imagine that it is the common people, and especially
the peasants who suffers.  An increase of the price of bread prevents
him from getting any, and even without that increase, he obtains it
with difficulty.  Wheat bread cost, as today, three sous per pound,[32]
but as the average day's work brought only nineteen sous instead of
forty, the day-laborer, working the same time, could buy only the half
of a loaf instead of a full loaf[33].  Taking everything into account,
and wages being estimated according to the price of grain, we find
that the husbandman's manual labor then procured him 959 litres of
wheat, while nowadays it gives him 1,851 litres; his well-being,
accordingly, has advanced ninety-three per cent., which suffices to
show to what extent his predecessors suffered privations.  And these
privations are peculiar to France.  Through analogous observations and
estimates Arthur Young shows that in France those who lived on field
labor, and they constituted the great majority, are seventy-six per
cent.  less comfortable than the same laborers in England, while they
are seventy-six per cent.  less well fed and well clothed, besides
being worse treated in sickness and in health.  The result is that in
seven-eighths of the kingdom, there are no farmers, but simply
métayers (a kind of poor tenants)[34].  The peasant is too poor to
undertake cultivation on his own account, possessing no agricultural
capital[35].  "The proprietor, desirous of improving his land, finds no
one to cultivate it but miserable creatures possessing only a pair of
hands; he is obliged to advance everything for its cultivation at his
own expense, animals, implements and seed, and even to advance the
wherewithal to this tenant to feed him until the first crop comes in."
-  "At Vatan, for example, in Berry, the tenants, almost every year,
borrow bread of the proprietor in order to await the harvesting."  -
"Very rarely is one found who is not indebted to his master at least
one hundred livres a year."

Frequently the latter proposes to abandon the entire crop to them
on condition that they demand nothing of him during the year; "these
miserable creatures" have refused; left to themselves, they would not
be sure of keeping themselves alive.  -  In Limousin and in Angoumois
their poverty is so great[36] "that, deducting the taxes to which they
are subject, they have no more than from twenty-five to thirty livres
each person per annum to spend; and not in money, it must be stated,
but counting whatever they consume in kind out of the crops they
produce.  Frequently they have less, and when they cannot possibly make
a living the master is obliged to support them.  .  .  .  The métayer is
always reduced to just what is absolutely necessary to keep him from
starving." As to the small proprietor, the villager who plows his land
himself, his condition is but little better.  "Agriculture,[37] as our
peasants practice it, is a veritable drudgery; they die by thousands
in childhood, and in maturity they seek places everywhere but where
they should be."

 In 1783, throughout the plain of the Toulousain they eat only
maize, a mixture of flour, common seeds and very little wheat; those
on the mountains feed, a part of the year, on chestnuts; the potato is
hardly known, and, according to Arthur Young, ninety-nine out of a
hundred peasants would refuse to eat it.  According to the reports of
intendants, the basis of food, in Normandy, is oats; in the election-
district of Troyes, buck-wheat; in the Marche and in Limousin,
buckwheat with chestnuts and radishes; in Auvergne, buckwheat,
chestnuts, milk-curds and a little salted goat's meat; in Beauce, a
mixture of barley and rye; in Berry, a mixture of barley and oats.
There is no wheat bread; the peasant consumes inferior flour only
because he is unable to pay two sous a pound for his bread.  There is
no butcher's meat; at best he kills one pig a year.  His dwelling is
built of clay (pise), roofed with thatch, without windows, and the
floor is the beaten ground.  Even when the soil furnishes good building
materials, stone, slate and tile, the windows have no sashes.  In a
parish in Normandy,[38] in 1789, "most of the dwellings consist of
four posts." They are often mere stables or barns "to which a chimney
has been added made of four poles and some mud." Their clothes are
rags, and often in winter these are muslin rags.  In Quercy and
elsewhere, they have no stockings, or wooden shoes.  "It is not in the
power of an English imagination," says Arthur Young, "to imagine the
animals that waited on us here at the Chapeau Rouge,  -  creatures
that were called by courtesy Souillac women, but in reality walking
dung-hills.  But a neatly dressed, clean waiting-girl at an inn, will
be looked for in vain in France." On reading descriptions made on the
spot we see in France a similar aspect of country and of peasantry as
in Ireland, at least in its broad outlines.



III.  THE COUNTRYSIDE.

Aspects of the country and of the peasantry.

In the most fertile regions, for instance, in Limagne, both
cottages and faces denote "misery and privation."[39] "The peasants
are generally feeble, emaciated and of slight stature." Nearly all
derive wheat and wine from their homesteads, but they are forced to
sell this to pay their rents and taxes; they eat black bread, made of
rye and barley, and their sole beverage is water poured on the lees
and the husks.  "An Englishman[40] who has not traveled can not imagine
the figure made by infinitely the greater part of the countrywomen in
France." Arthur Young, who stops to talk with one of these in
Champagne, says that "this woman, at no great distance, might have
been taken for sixty or seventy, her figure was so bent and her face
so hardened and furrowed by labor,  -  but she said she was only
twenty-eight." This woman, her husband and her household, afford a
sufficiently accurate example of the condition of the small
proprietary husbandmen.  Their property consists simply of a patch of
ground, with a cow and a poor little horse; their seven children
consume the whole of the cow's milk.  They owe to one seignior a
franchard (forty-two pounds) of flour, and three chickens; to another
three franchards of oats, one chicken and one sou, to which must be
added the taille and other taxes.  "God keep us!" she said, "for the
tailles and the dues crush us."  -  What must it be in districts where
the soil is poor!   -

"From Ormes, (near Chatellerault), as far as Poitiers," writes a
lady,[41] "there is a good deal of ground which brings in nothing, and
from Poitiers to my residence (in Limousin) 25,000 arpents of ground
consist wholly of heath and sea-grass.  The peasantry live on rye, of
which they do not remove the bran, and which is as black and heavy as
lead.  -  In Poitou, and here, they plow up only the  skin of the
ground with a miserable little plow without wheels.  .  .  .  From
Poitiers to Montmorillon it is nine leagues, equal to sixteen of
Paris, and I assure you that I have seen but four men on the road,
and, between Montmorillon and my own house, which is four leagues, but
three; and then only at a distance, not having met one on the road.
You need not be surprised at this in such a country.  .  .  Marriage
takes place as early as with the grand seigniors," doubtless for fear
of the militia.  "But the population of the country is no greater
because almost every infant dies.  Mothers having scarcely any milk,
their infants eat the bread of which I spoke, the stomach of a girl of
four years being as big as that of a pregnant woman.  .  .  .  The rye
crop this year was ruined by the frost on Easter day; flour is scarce;
of the twelve métairies owned by my mother, four of them may, perhaps,
have some on hand.  There has been no rain since Easter; no hay, no
pasture, no vegetables, no fruit.  You see the lot of the poor peasant.
There is no manure, and there are no cattle.  .  .  .  My mother, whose
granaries used to be always full, has not a grain of wheat in them,
because, for two years past, she has fed all her métayers and the
poor."

 "The peasant is assisted," says a seignior of the same
province,[42] "protected, and rarely maltreated, but he is looked upon
with disdain.  If kindly and pliable he is made subservient, but if
ill-disposed he becomes soured and irritable.  .  .  .  He is kept in
misery, in an abject state, by men who are not at all inhuman but
whose prejudices, especially among the nobles, lead them to regard him
as of a different species of being.  .  .  .  The proprietor gets all he
can out of him; in any event, looking upon him and his oxen as
domestic animals, he puts them into harness and employs them in all
weathers for every kind of journey, and for every species of carting
and transport.  On the other hand, this métayer thinks of living with
as little labor as possible, converting as much ground as he can into
pasturage, for the reason that the product arising from the increase
of stock costs him no labor.  The little plowing he does is for the
purpose of raising low-priced provisions suitable for his own
nourishment, such as buckwheat, radishes, etc.  His enjoyment consists
only of his own idleness and sluggishness, hoping for a good chestnut
year and doing nothing voluntarily but procreate;" unable to hire
farming hands he begets children.   -

 The rest, ordinary laborers, have a few savings, "living on the
herbage, and on a few goats which devour everything." Often again,
these, by order of Parliament, are killed by the game-keepers.  A
woman, with two children in swaddling clothes, having no milk, "and
without an inch of ground," whose two goats, her sole resource, had
thus been slain, and another, with one goat slain in the same way, and
who begs along with her boy, present themselves at the gate of the
chateau; one receives twelve livres, while the other is admitted as a
domestic, and henceforth, '' this village is all bows and smiling
faces.''  -  In short, they are not accustomed to kindness; the lot of
all these poor people is to endure.  "As with rain and hail, they
regard as inevitable the necessity of being oppressed by the
strongest, the richest, the most skillful, the most in repute," and
this stamps on them, "if one may be allowed to say so, an air of
painful suffering."

In Auvergne, a feudal country, covered with extensive ecclesiastic
and seigniorial domains, the misery is the same.  At Clermont-
Ferrand,[43] "there are many streets that can for blackness, dirt and
scents only be represented by narrow channels cut in a dunghill." In
the inns of the largest bourgs, "closeness, misery, dirtiness and
darkness." That of Pradelles is "one of the worst in France." That of
Aubenas, says Young, "would be a purgatory for one of my pigs." The
senses, in short, are paralyzed.  The primitive man is content so long
as he can sleep and get something to eat.  He gets something to eat,
but what kind of food? To put up with the indigestible mess a peasant
here requires a still tougher stomach than in Limousin; in certain
villages where, ten years later, every year twenty or twenty-five hogs
are to be slaughtered, they now slaughter but three[44].  - On
contemplating this temperament, rude and intact since Vercingetorix,
and, moreover, rendered more savage by suffering, one cannot avoid
being somewhat alarmed.  The Marquis de Mirabeau describes

"the votive festival of Mont-Dore: savages descending from the
mountain in torrents,[45] the curate with stole and surplice, the
justice in his wig, the police corps with sabers drawn, all guarding
the open square before letting the bagpipers play; the dance
interrupted in a quarter of an hour by a fight; the hooting and cries
of children, of the feeble and other spectators, urging them on as the
rabble urge on so many fighting dogs; frightful looking men, or rather
wild beasts covered with coats of coarse wool, wearing wide leather
belts pierced with copper nails, gigantic in stature, which is
increased by high wooden shoes, and making themselves still taller by
standing on tiptoe to see the battle, stamping with their feet as it
progresses and rubbing each other's flanks with their elbows, their
faces haggard and covered with long matted hair, the upper portion
pallid, and the lower distended, indicative of cruel delight and a
sort of ferocious impatience.  And these folks pay the taille! And now
they want to take away their salt! And they know nothing of those they
despoil, of those whom they think they govern, believing that, by a
few strokes of a cowardly and careless pen, they may starve them with
impunity up to the final catastrophe! Poor Jean-Jacques, I said to
myself, had any one dispatched you, with your system, to copy music
amongst these folks, he would have had some sharp replies to make to
your discourses!"

Prophetic warning and admirable foresight in one whom an excess of
evil does not blind to the evil of the remedy! Enlightened by his
feudal and rural instincts, the old man at once judges both the
government and the philosophers, the Ancient Regime and the
Revolution.



IV.  THE PEASANT BECOMES LANDOWNER.

How the peasant becomes a proprietor.  - He is no better off.  -
Increase of taxes.  - He is the "mule" of the Ancient Regime.

Misery begets bitterness in a man; but ownership coupled with
misery renders him still more bitter.  He may have submitted to
indigence but not to spoliation  -   which is the situation of the
peasant in 1789, for, during the eighteenth century, he had become the
possessor of land.  But how could he maintain himself in such
destitution? The fact is almost incredible, but it is nevertheless
true.  We can only explain it by the character of the French peasant,
by his sobriety, his tenacity, his rigor with himself, his
dissimulation, his hereditary passion for property and especially for
that of the soil.  He had lived on privations, and economized sou after
sou.  Every year a few pieces of silver are added to his little store
of crowns buried in the most secret recess of his cellar; Rousseau's
peasant, concealing his wine and bread in a pit, assuredly had a yet
more secret hiding-place; a little money in a woollen stocking or in a
jug escapes, more readily than elsewhere, the search of the clerks.
Dressed in rags, going barefoot, eating nothing but coarse black
bread, but cherishing the little treasure in his breast on which he
builds so many hopes, he watches for the opportunity which never fails
to come.  "In spite of privileges," writes a gentleman in 1755,[46]
"the nobles are daily being ruined and reduced, the Third-Estate
making all the fortunes." A number of domains, through forced or
voluntary sales, thus pass into the hands of financiers, of men of the
quill, of merchants, and of the well-to-do bourgeois.  Before
undergoing this total dispossession, however, the seignior, involved
in debt, is evidently resigned to partial alienation of his property.
The peasant who has bribed the steward is at hand with his hoard.  "It
is poor property, my lord, and it costs you more than you get from
it." This may refer to an isolated patch, one end of a field or
meadow, sometimes a farm whose farmer pays nothing, and generally
worked by a métayer whose wants and indolence make him an annual
expense to his master.  The latter may say to himself that the
alienated parcel is not lost, since, some day or other, through his
right of repurchase, he may take it back, while, in the meantime, he
enjoys a cens, drawbacks, and the lord's dues.  Moreover, there is on
his domain and around him, extensive open spaces which the decline of
cultivation and depopulation have left a desert.  To restore the value
of this he must surrender its proprietorship.  There is no other way by
which to attach man permanently to the soil.  And the government helps
him along in this matter.  Obtaining no revenue from the abandoned
soil, it assents to a provisional withdrawal of its too weighty hand.
By the edict of 1766, a piece of cleared waste land remains free of
the taille for fifteen years, and, thereupon, in twenty-eight
provinces 400,000 arpents are cleared in three years[47].

This is the mode by which the seigniorial domain gradually crumbles
away and decreases.  Towards the last, in many places, with the
exception of the chateau and the small adjoining farm which brings in
2 or 3000 francs a year, nothing is left to the seignior but his
feudal dues;[48] the rest of the soil belongs to the peasantry.
Forbonnais already remarks, towards 1750, that many of the nobles and
of the ennobled "reduced to extreme poverty but with titles to immense
possessions," have sold off portions to small cultivators at low
prices, and often for the amount of the taille.  Towards 1760, one-
quarter of the soil is said to have already passed into the hands of
farmers.  In 1772, in relation to the vingtième, which is levied on the
net revenue of real property, the intendant of Caen, having completed
the statement of his quota, estimates that out of 150,000 "there are
perhaps 50,000 whose liabilities did not exceed five sous, and perhaps
still as many more not exceeding twenty sous."[49] Contemporary
observers authenticate this passion of the peasant for land.  "The
savings of the lower classes, which elsewhere are invested with
individuals and in the public funds, are wholly destined in France to
the purchase of land." "Accordingly the number of small rural holdings
is always on the increase.  Necker says that there is an immensity of
them." Arthur Young, in 1789, is astonished at their great number and
"inclines to think that they form a third of the kingdom." This
already would be our actual estimate, and we still find,
approximately, the actual figures, on estimating the number of
proprietors in comparison with the number of inhabitants.

The small cultivator, however, in becoming a possessor of the soil
assumed its charges.  Simply as day-laborer, and with his arms alone,
he was only partially affected by the taxes; "where there is nothing
the king loses his dues." But now, vainly is he poor and declaring
himself still poorer; the fisc has a hold on him and on every portion
of his new possessions.  The collectors, peasants like himself, and
jealous, by virtue of being his neighbors, know how much his property,
exposed to view, brings in; hence they take all they can lay their
hands on.  Vainly has he labored with renewed energy; his hands remain
as empty, and, at the end of the year, he discovers that his field has
produced him nothing.  The more he acquires and produces the more
burdensome do the taxes become.  In 1715, the taille and the poll-tax,
which he alone pays, or nearly alone, amounts to sixty-six millions of
livres; the amount is ninety-three millions in 1759 and one hundred
and ten millions in 1789.[50]  In 1757, the charges amount to
283,156,000 livres; in 1789 to 476,294,000 livres.

Theoretically, through humanity and through good sense, there is,
doubtless, a desire to relieve the peasant, and pity is felt for him.
But, in practice, through necessity and routine, he is treated
according to Cardinal Richelieu's precept, as a beast of burden to
which oats is sparingly rationed out for fear that he may become too
strong and kick, "a mule which, accustomed to his load, is spoiled
more by long repose than by work."....

________________________________________________________________

Notes:

[1] Labruyère, edition of Destailleurs, II, 97.  Addition to the
fourth ed.  (1689)

[2] Oppression and misery begin about 1672.  - At the end of the
seventeenth century (l698), the reports made up by the intendants for
the Duc de Bourgogne, state that many of the districts and provinces
have lost one-sixth, one-fifth, one-quarter, the third and even the
half of their population.  (See details in the "correspondance des
contrôleurs-généraux from 1683 to 1698," published by M. de
Boislisle).  According to the reports of intendants, (Vauban, "Dime
Royale," ch.  VII.  § 2.), the population of France in 1698 amounted to
19,994,146 inhabitants.  From 1698 to 1715 it decreases.  According to
Forbonnais, there were but 16 or 17 millions under the Regency.  After
this epoch the population no longer diminishes but, for forty years,
it hardly increases.  In 1753 (Voltaire, "Dict Phil.," article
Population), there are 3,550,499 hearths, besides 700,000 souls in
Paris, which makes from 16 to 17 millions of inhabitants if we count
four and one-half persons to each fireside, and from 18 to 19 millions
if we count five persons.

[3] Floquet, "Histoire du Parlement de Normandie," VII.  402.

[4] Rousseau, "Confessions," 1st part, ch.  IV.  (1732).

[5]D'Argenson, 19th and 24th May, July 4, and Aug.  1, 1739

[6] "Résumé d'histoire d'Auvergne par un Auvergnat" (M.
Tallandier), p.  313.

[7] D'Argenson, 1740, Aug.  7 and 21, September 19 and 24, May 28
and November 7.

[8] D'Argenson, October 4, 1749; May 20, Sept.  12, Oct.  28, Dec.
28, 1750.

[9] D'Argenson, June 21, 1749; May 22, 1750; March 19, 1751;
February 14, April 15, 1752, etc.

[10] Floquet, ibid..  VII.  410 (April, 1752, an address to the
Parliament of Normandy)

[11] D'Argenson, November 26, 1751: March 15, 1753.

[12] D'Argenson, IV.  124; VI.  165: VII.  194, etc.

[13] Floquet, ibid.  VI.  400-430

[14] "Correspondance," by Métra, I.  338, 341.  - Hippeau, "Le
Gouvernement de Normandie," IV.  62, 199, 358.

[15] "Procès-verbaux de l'assemblée provinciale de Basse Normandie"
(1787), p.151.

[16] Archives nationales, G, 319.  Condition of the directory of
Issoudun, and H, 1149, 612, 1418.

[17] Ibid..  The letters of M. de Crosne, intendant of Rouen
(February 17, 1784); of M. de Blossac, intendant of Poitiers (May 9,
1784); of M. de Villeneuve, intendant of Bourges (March 28, 1784); of
M. de Cypierre, intendant of Orleans (May 28, 1784); of M. de Maziron,
intendant of Moulins (June 28, 1786); of M. Dupont, intendant of
Moulins (Nov.  16, 1779), etc.

[18] Archives nationales, H, 200 (A memorandum by M. Amelot,
intendant at Dijon, 1786).

[19] Gautier de Bianzat, "Doléances sur les surcharges que portent
les gens du Tiers-Etat," etc.  (1789), p.  188.  - "Procès-verbaux de
I'assemblée provinciale d'Auvergne" (1787), p.  175.

[20] Théron de Montaugé, "L'Agriculture et les chores rurales dans
le Toulousain," 112.

[21] "Procès-verbaux de assemblée provinciale de la Haute-Guyenne,"
I.  47, 79.

[22] "Procès-verbaux de l'assemblée provinciale du Soissonais"
(1787), p.  457; "de l'assemblée provinciale d'Auch," p.  24.

[23] "Résumé des cahiers," by Prudhomme, III.  271.

[24] Hippeau, ibid.  VI.  74, 243 (grievances drawn up by the
Chevalier de Bertin).

[25] See the article "Fermiers et Grains," in the Encyclopedia, by
Quesnay, 1756.

[26] Théron de Montaugé, p.25.  - "Ephémérides du citoyen," III.  190
(1766); IX.  15 (an article by M. de Butré, 1767).

[27] "Procés-verbaux de l'assemblée provinciale de l'Orléanais"
(1787), in a memoir by M. d'Autroche.

[28] One is surprised to see such a numerous people fed even though
one-half, or one-quarter of the arable land is sterile wastes.  (Arthur
Young, II, 137.)

[29] Archives nationales, H, 1149.  A letter of the Comtesse de
Saint-Georges (1772) on the effects of frost.  "The ground this year
will remain uncultivated, there being already much land in this
condition, and especially in our parish." Théron de Montaugé, ibid..
45, 80.

[30] Arthur Young, II.  112, 115.  - Théron de Montaugé, 52, 61.

[31] The Marquis de Mirabeau, "Traité de la population," p.29.

[32] Cf Galiani, "Dialogues sur le commerce des blés." (1770), p.
193.  Wheat bread at this time cost four sous per pound.

[33] Arthur Young, II.  200, 201, 260-265.  -  Théron de Montaugé,
59, 68, 75, 79, 81, 84.

[34] "The poor people who cultivate the soil here are métayers,
that is men who hire the land without ability to stock it; the
proprietor is forced to provide cattle and seed and he and his tenants
divide the produce."  -  ARTHUR YOUNG.(TR.)

[35] "Ephémérides du citoyen," VI.  81-94 (1767), and IX.  99 (1767).

[36] Turgot, "Collections des économistes," I.  544, 549.

[37] Marquis de Mirabeau, "Traité de la population," 83..

[38] Hippeau, VI, 91.

[39] Dulaure, "Description de l'Auvergne," 1789.

[40] Arthur Young, I.  235.

[41] "Ephémérides du citoyen," XX.  146, a letter of the Marquis de
-   August 17, 1767.

[42] Lucas de Montigny, "Memoires de Mirabeau," I, 394.

[43] Arthur Young, I.  280, 289, 294.

[44] Lafayette "Mémoires," V.  533.

[45] Lucas de Montigny, ibid.  (a letter of August 18, 1777).

[46] De Tocqueville, 117.

[47] "Procès-verbaux de l'assemblée provinciale de Basse Normandie"
(1787), p.205.

[48] Léonce de Lavergne, p.  26 (according to the tables of
indemnity granted to the émigrés in 1825).  In the estate of Blet (see
note 2 at the end of the volume), twenty-two parcels are alienated in
1760.  - Arthur Young, I.  308 (the domain of Tour-d'Aigues, in
Provence), and II.  198, 214.  - Doniol, "Histoire des classes rurales,"
p.450.  - De Tocqueville, p.36.

[49] Archives nationales, H, 1463 (a letter by M. de Fontette,
November 16, 1772).  -  Cf.  Cochut, "Revue des Deux Mondes,"
September, 1848.  The sale of the national property seems not to have
sensibly increased small properties nor sensibly diminished the number
of the large ones.  The Revolution developed moderate sized properties.
In 1848, the large estates numbered 183,000 (23,000 families paying
300 francs taxes, and more, and possessing on the average 260 hectares
of land, and 160,000 families paying from 230 to 500 francs taxes and
possessing on the average 75 hectares.) These 183,000 families
possessed 18,000,000 hectares.   -  There are besides 700,000 medium
sized estates (paying from 50 to 250 francs tax), and comprising
15,000,000 hectares.   -  And finally 3,900,000 small properties
comprising 15,000,000 hectares (900,000 paying from 25 to 50 francs
tax, averaging five and one-half hectares each, and 3,000,000 paying
less than 25 francs, averaging three and one ninth hectares each).   -
According to the partial statement of de Tocqueville the number of
holders of real property had increased, on the average, to five-
twelfths; the population, at the same time, having increased five-
thirteenths (from 26 to 36 millions).

[50] "Compte-général des revenus et dépenses fixes au 1er Mai, 1789
(Imprimerie Royale, 1789).  - De Luynes, XVI.  49.  - Roux and Buchez, I.
206, 374.  (This relates only to the countries of election; in the
provinces, with assemblies, the increase is no less great).  Archives
nationales, H2, 1610 (the parish of Bourget, in Anjou).  Extracts from
the taille rolls of three métayer- farms belonging to M. de Ruillé.
The taxes in 1762 are 334 livres, 3 sous; in 1783, 372 livres, 15
sous.






CHAPTER II.  TAXATION THE PRINCIPAL CAUSE OF MISERY.

I.   EXTORTION.

Direct taxes.  - State of different domains at the end of the reign
of Louis XV.  - Levies of the tithe and the owner.  - What remains to
the proprietor.

 Let us closely examine the extortions he has to endure, which are
very great, much beyond any that we can imagine.  Economists had long
prepared the budget of a farm and shown by statistics the excess of
charges with which the cultivator is overwhelmed.  If he continues to
cultivate, they say, he must have his share in the crops, an
inviolable portion, equal to one-half of the entire production, and
from which nothing can be deducted without ruining him.  This portion,
in short, accurately represents, and not a sou too much, in the first
place, the interest of the capital first expended on the farm in
cattle, furniture, and implements of husbandry; in the second place,
the maintenance of this capital, every year depreciated by wear and
tear; in the third place, the advances made during the current year
for seed, wages, and food for men and animals; and, in the last place,
the compensation due him for the risks he takes and his losses.  Here
is a first lien which must be satisfied beforehand, taking precedence
of all others, superior to that of the seignior, to that of the tithe-
owner (décimateur), to even that of the king, for it is an
indebtedness due to the soil.[1] After this is paid back, then, and
only then, that which remains, the net product, can be touched.  Now,
in the then state of agriculture, the tithe-owner and the king
appropriate one-half of this net product, when the estate is large,
and the whole, if the estate is a small one[2].  A certain large farm
in Picardy, worth to its owner 3,600 livres, pays 1,800 livres to the
king, and 1,311 livres to the tithe owner; another, in the
Soissonnais, rented for 4,500 livres, pays 2,200 livres taxes and more
than 1,000 livres to the tithes.  An ordinary métayer-farm near Nevers
pays into the treasury 138 livres, 121 livres to the church, and 114
livres to the proprietor.  On another, in Poitou, the fisc (tax
authorities) absorbs 348 livres, and the proprietor receives only 238.
In general, in the regions of large farms, the proprietor obtains ten
livres the arpent if the cultivation is very good, and three livres
when ordinary.  In the regions of small farms, and of the métayer
system, he gets fifteen sous the arpent, eight sous and even six sous.
The entire net profit may be said to go to the church and into the
State treasury.

Hired labor, meantime, is no less costly.  On this métayer-farm in
Poitou, which brings in eight sous the arpent, thirty-six laborers
consume each twenty-six francs per annum in rye, two francs
respectively in vegetables, oil and milk preparations, and two francs
ten sous in pork, amounting to a sum total, each year, for each
person, of sixteen pounds of meat at an expense of thirty-six francs.
In fact they drink water only, use rape-seed oil for soup and for
light, never taste butter, and dress themselves in materials made of
the wool and hair of the sheep and goats they raise.  They purchase
nothing save the tools necessary to make the fabrics of which these
provide the material.  On another metayer-farm, on the confines of la
Marche and Berry, forty-six laborers cost a smaller sum, each one
consuming only the value of twenty-five francs per annum.  We can judge
by this of the exorbitant share appropriated to themselves by the
Church and State, since, at so small a cost of cultivation, the
proprietor finds in his pocket, at the end of the year, six or eight
sous per arpent out of which, if plebeian, he must still pay the dues
to his seignior, contribute to the common purse for the militia, buy
his taxed salt and work out his corvée and the rest.  Towards the end
of the reign of Louis XV in Limousin, says Turgot,[3] the king derives
for himself alone "about as much from the soil as the proprietor." In
a certain election-district, that of Tulle, where he abstracts fifty-
six and one-half per cent.  of the product, there remains to the latter
forty-three and one-half per cent.  thus accounting for "a multitude of
domains being abandoned."

It must not be supposed that time renders the tax less onerous or
that, in other provinces, the cultivator is better treated.  In this
respect the documents are authentic and almost up to the latest hour.
We have only to take up the official statements of the provincial
assemblies held in 1787, to learn by official figures to what extent
the fisc may abuse the men who labor, and take bread out of the mouths
of those who have earned it by the sweat of their brows.



II.  LOCAL CONDITIONS.

State of certain provinces on the outbreak of the Revolution.  - The
taille, and other taxes.- The proportion of these taxes in relation to
income.- The sum total immense.

Direct taxation alone is here concerned, the tailles, collateral
taxes, poll-tax, vingtièmes, and the pecuniary tax substituted for the
corvée[4] In Champagne, the tax-payer pays on 100 livres income fifty-
four livres fifteen sous, on the average, and in many parishes,[5]
seventy-one livres thirteen sous.  In the Ile-de-France, "if a taxable
inhabitant of a village, the proprietor of twenty arpents of land
which he himself works, and the income of which is estimated at ten
livres per arpent it is supposed that he is likewise the owner of the
house he occupies, the site being valued at forty livres."[6] This
tax-payer pays for his real taille, personal and industrial, thirty-
five livres fourteen sous, for collateral taxes seventeen livres
seventeen sous, for the poll-tax twenty-one livres eight sous, for the
vingtièmes twenty-four livres four sous, in all ninety-nine livres
three sous, to which must be added about five livres as the
substitution for the corvée, in all 104 livres on a piece of property
which he rents for 240 livres, a tax amounting to five-twelfths of his
income.

It is much worse on making the same calculation for the poorer
generalities.  In Haute-Guyenne,[7] "all property in land is taxed for
the taille, the collateral taxes, and the vingtièmes, more than one-
quarter of its revenue, the only deduction being the expenses of
cultivation; also dwellings, one-third of their revenue, deducting
only the cost of repairs and of maintenance; to which must be added
the poll-tax, which takes about one-tenth of the revenue; the tithe,
which absorbs one-seventh; the seigniorial rents which take another
seventh; the tax substituted for the corvée; the costs of compulsory
collections, seizures, sequestration and constraints, and all ordinary
and extraordinary local charges.  This being subtracted, it is evident
that, in communities moderately taxed, the proprietor does not enjoy a
third of his income, and that, in the communities wronged by the
assessments, the proprietors are reduced to the status of simple
farmers scarcely able to get enough to restore the expenses of
cultivation." In Auvergne,[8] the taille amounts to four sous on the
livre net profit; the collateral taxes and the poll-tax take off four
sous three deniers more; the vingtièmes, two sous and three deniers;
the contribution to the royal roads, to the free gift, to local
charges and the cost of levying, take again one sou one denier, the
total being eleven sous and seven deniers on the livre income, without
counting seigniorial dues and the tithe.  "The bureau, moreover,
recognizes with regret, that several of the collections pay at the
rate of seventeen sous, sixteen sous, and the most moderate at the
rate of fourteen sous the livre.  The evidence of this is in the
bureau; it is on file in the registry of the court of excise, and of
the election-districts.  It is still more apparent in parishes where an
infinite number of assessments are found, laid on property that has
been abandoned, which the collectors lease, and the product of which
is often inadequate to pay the tax." Statistics of this kind are
terribly eloquent.  They may be summed up in one word.  Putting together
Normandy, the Orleans region, that of Soissons, Champagne, Ile-de-
France, Berry, Poitou, Auvergne, the Lyons region, Gascony, and Haute-
Guyenne, in brief the principal election sections, we find that out of
every hundred francs of revenue the direct tax on the tax-payer is
fifty-three francs, or more than one-half[9].  This is about five times
as much as at the present day.



III.  THE COMMON LABORER.

Four direct taxes on the common laborer.

The taxation authorities, however, in thus bearing down on taxable
property has not released the taxable person without property.  In the
absence of land it seizes on men.  In default of an income it taxes a
man's wages.  With the exception of the vingtièmes, the preceding taxes
not only bore on those who possessed something but, again, on those
who possessed nothing.  In the Toulousain[10] at St.  Pierre de
Barjouville, the poorest day-laborer, with nothing but his hands by
which to earn his support, and getting ten sous a day, pays eight,
nine and ten livres poll-tax.  "In Burgundy[11] it is common to see a
poor mechanic, without any property, taxed eighteen and twenty livres
for his poll-tax and the taille." In Limousin,[12] all the money
brought back by the masons in winter serves "to pay the taxes charged
to their families." As to the rural day-laborers and the settlers
(colons) the proprietor, even when privileged, who employs them, is
obliged to take upon himself a part of their quota, otherwise, being
without anything to eat, they cannot work,[13] even in the interest of
the master; man must have his ration of bread the same as an ox his
ration of hay.  "In Brittany,[14] it is notorious that nine-tenths of
the artisans, though poorly fed and poorly clothed, have not a crown
free of debt at the end of the year," the poll-tax and others carrying
off this only and last crown.  At Paris[15] "the dealer in ashes, the
buyer of old bottles, the gleaner of the gutters, the peddlers of old
iron and old hats," the moment they obtain a shelter pay the poll-tax
of three livres and ten sous each.  To ensure its payment the occupant
of a house who sub-lets to them is made responsible.  Moreover, in case
of delay, a "blue man," a bailiff's subordinate, is sent who installs
himself on the spot and whose time they have to pay for.  Mercier cites
a mechanic, named Quatremain, who, with four small children, lodged in
the sixth story, where he had arranged a chimney as a sort of alcove
in which he and his family slept.  "One day I opened his door,
fastened with a latch only, the room presenting to view nothing but
the walls and a vice; the man, coming out from under his chimney, half
sick, says to me, 'I thought it was the blue man for the poll-tax."'
Thus, whatever the condition of the person subject to taxation,
however stripped and destitute, the dexterous hands of the fisc take
hold of him.  Mistakes cannot possibly occur: it puts on no disguise,
it comes on the appointed day and rudely lays its hand on his
shoulder.  The garret and the hut, as well as the farm and the
farmhouse know the collector, the constable and the bailiff; no hovel
escapes the detestable brood.  The people sow, harvest their crops,
work and undergo privation for their benefit; and, should the pennies
so painfully saved each week amount, at the end of the year to a piece
of silver, the mouth of their pouch closes over it.



IV.  COLLECTIONS AND SEIZURES.-

Observe the system actually at work.  It is a sort of shearing
machine, clumsy and badly put together, of which the action is about
as mischievous as it is serviceable.  The worst feature is that, with
its creaking gear, the taxable, those employed as its final
instruments, are equally shorn and flayed.  Each parish contains two,
three, five, or seven individuals who, under the title of collectors,
and under the authority of the election tribunal, apportion and assess
the taxes.  "No duty is more onerous;"[16] everybody, through patronage
or favor, tries to get rid of it.  The communities are constantly
pleading against the refractory, and, that nobody may escape under the
pretext of ignorance, the table of future collectors is made up for
ten and fifteen years in advance.  In parishes of the second class
these consist of "small proprietors, each of whom becomes a collector
about every six years." In many of the villages the artisans, day-
laborers, and métayer-farmers perform the service, although requiring
all their time to earn their own living.  In Auvergne, where the able-
bodied men expatriate themselves in winter to find work, the women are
taken;[17] in the election-district of Saint-Flour, a certain village
has four collectors in petticoats.  -  They are responsible for all
claims entrusted to them, their property, their furniture and their
persons; and, up to the time of Turgot, each is bound for the others.
We can judge of their risks and sufferings.  In 1785,[18] in one single
district in Champagne, eighty-five are imprisoned and two hundred of
them are on the road every year.  "The collector, says the provincial
assembly of Berry,[19] usually passes one-half of the day for two
years running from door to door to see delinquent tax-payers." "This
service," writes Turgot,[20] "is the despair and almost always the
ruin of those obliged to perform it; all families in easy
circumstances in a village are thus successively reduced to want." In
short, there is no collector who is not forced to act and who has not
each year "eight or ten writs" served on him[21].  Sometimes he is
imprisoned at the expense of the parish.  Sometimes proceedings are
instituted against him and the tax-contributors by the installation of
" 'blue men' and seizures, seizures under arrest, seizures in
execution and sales of furniture." "In the single district of
Villefranche," says the provincial Assembly of Haute-Guyenne, "a
hundred and six warrant officers and other agents of the bailiff are
counted always on the road."

The thing becomes customary and the parish suffers in vain, for it
would suffer yet more were it to do otherwise.  " Near Aurillac," says
the Marquis de Mirabeau,[22] "there is industry, application and
economy without which there would be only misery and want.  This
produces a people equally divided into being , on the one hand,
insolvent and poor and on the other hand shameful and rich, the latter
who, for fear of being fined, create the impoverished.  The taille once
assessed, everybody groans and complains and nobody pays it.  The term
having expired, at the hour and minute, constraint begins, the
collectors, although able, taking no trouble to arrest this by making
a settlement, notwithstanding the installation of the bailiff's men is
costly.  But this kind of expense is habitual and people expect it
instead of fearing it, for, if it were less rigorous, they would be
sure to be additionally burdened the following year." The receiver,
indeed, who pays the bailiff's officers a franc a day, makes them pay
two francs and appropriates the difference.  Hence "if certain parishes
venture to pay promptly, without awaiting constraint, the receiver,
who sees himself deprived of the best portion of his gains, becomes
ill-humored, and, at the next department (meeting), an arrangement is
made between himself, messieurs the elected, the sub-delegate and
other shavers of this species, for the parish to bear a double load,
to teach it how to behave itself."

A population of administrative blood-suckers thus lives on the
peasant.  "Lately," says an intendant, "in the district of
Romorantin,[23] the collectors received nothing from a sale of
furniture amounting to six hundred livres, because the proceeds were
absorbed by the expenses.  In the district of Chateaudun the same thing
occurred at a sale amounting to nine hundred livres and there are
other transactions of the same kind of which we have no information,
however flagrant." Besides this, the fisc itself is pitiless.  The same
intendant writes, in 1784, a year of famine:[24] "People have seen,
with horror, the collector, in the country, disputing with heads of
families over the costs of a sale of furniture which had been
appropriated to stopping their children's cry of want." Were the
collectors not to make seizures they would themselves be seized.  Urged
on by the receiver we see them, in the documents, soliciting,
prosecuting and persecuting the tax-payers.  Every Sunday and every
fête-day they are posted at the church door to warn delinquents; and
then, during the week they go from door to door to obtain their dues.
"Commonly they cannot write, and take a scribe with them." Out of six
hundred and six traversing the district of Saint-Flour not ten of them
are able to read the official summons and sign a receipt; hence
innumerable mistakes and frauds.  Besides a scribe they take along the
bailiff's subordinates, persons of the lowest class, laborers without
work, conscious of being hated and who act accordingly.  "Whatever
orders may be given them not to take anything, not to make the
inhabitants feed them, or to enter taverns with collectors," habit is
too strong "and the abuse continues."[25] But, burdensome as the
bailiff's men may be, care is taken not to evade them.  In this
respect, writes an intendant, " their obduracy is strange." " No
person," a receiver reports,[26] "pays the collector until he sees the
bailiff's man in his house." The peasant resembles his ass, refusing
to go without being beaten, and, although in this he may appear
stupid, he is clever.  For the collector, being responsible, "naturally
inclines to an increase of the assessment on prompt payers to the
advantage of the negligent.  Hence the prompt payer becomes, in his
turn, negligent and, although with money in his chest, he allows the
process to go on."[27] Summing all up, he calculates that the process,
even if expensive, costs less than extra taxation, and of the two
evils he chooses the least.  He has but one resource against the
collector and receiver, his simulated or actual poverty, voluntary or
involuntary.  "Every one subject to the taille," says, again, the
provincial assembly of Berry, "dreads to expose his resources; he
avoids any display of these in his furniture, in his dress, in his
food, and in everything open to another's observation."  -  "M. de
Choiseul-Gouffier,[28] willing to roof his peasants' houses, liable to
take fire, with tiles, they thanked him for his kindness but begged
him to leave them as they were, telling him that if these were covered
with tiles, instead of with thatch, the subdelegates would increase
their taxation."   -  "People work, but merely to satisfy their prime
necessities.  .  .  .  The fear of paying an extra crown makes an average
man neglect a profit of four times the amount."[29]  -  ".  .  .
Accordingly, lean cattle, poor implements, and bad manure-heaps even
among those who might have been better off."[30] - " If I earned any
more," says a peasant, "it would be for the collector." Annual and
illimitable spoliation "takes away even the desire for comforts." The
majority, pusillanimous, distrustful, stupefied, "debased," "differing
little from the old serfs,[31]" resemble Egyptian fellahs and Hindoo
pariahs.  The fisc, indeed, through the absolutism and enormity of its
claims, renders property of all kinds precarious, every acquisition
vain, every accumulation delusive; in fact, proprietors are owners
only of that which they can hide.



V.  INDIRECT TAXES.

The salt-tax and the excise.

The tax-man, in every country, has two hands, one which visibly and
directly searches the coffers of tax-payers, and the other which
covertly employs the hand of an intermediary so as not to incur the
odium of fresh extortions.  Here, no precaution of this kind is taken,
the claws of the latter being as visible as those of the former;
according to its structure and the complaints made of it, I am tempted
to believe it more offensive than the other.  -  In the first place,
the salt-tax, the excises and the customs are annually estimated and
sold to adjudicators who, purely as a business matter, make as much
profit as they can by their bargain.  In relation to the tax-payer they
are not administrators but speculators; they have bought him up.  He
belongs to them by the terms of their contract; they will squeeze out
of him, not merely their advances and the interest on their advances,
but, again, every possible benefit.  This suffices to indicate the mode
of levying indirect taxes.  -  In the second place, by means of the
salt-tax and the excises, the inquisition enters each household.  In
the provinces where these are levied, in Ile-de-France, Maine, Anjou,
Touraine, Orleanais, Berry, Bourbonnais, Bourgogne, Champagne, Perche,
Normandy and Picardy, salt costs thirteen sous a pound, four times as
much as at the present day, and, considering the standard of money,
eight times as much[32].  And, furthermore, by virtue of the ordinance
of 1680, each person over seven years of age is expected to purchase
seven pounds per annum, which, with four persons to a family, makes
eighteen francs a year, and equal to nineteen days' work: a new direct
tax, which, like the taille, is a fiscal hand in the pockets of the
tax-payers, and compelling them, like the taille, to torment each
other.  Many of them, in fact, are officially appointed to assess this
obligatory use of salt and, like the collectors of the taille, these
are "jointly responsible for the price of the salt." Others below
them, ever following the same course as in collecting the taille, are
likewise responsible.  "After the former have been seized in their
persons and property, the speculator fermier is authorized to commence
action, under the principle of mutual responsibility, against the
principal inhabitants of the parish." The effects of this system have
just been described.  Accordingly, "in Normandy," says the Rouen
parliament,[33] "unfortunates without bread are daily objects of
seizure, sale and execution."

But if the rigor is as great as in the matter of the taille, the
vexations are ten times greater, for these are domestic, minute and of
daily occurrence.  -  It is forbidden to divert an ounce of the seven
obligatory pounds to any use but that of the "pot and the salt-
cellar." If a villager should economize the salt of his soup to make
brine for a piece of pork, with a view to winter consumption, let him
look out for the collecting-clerks! His pork is confiscated and the
fine is three hundred livres.  The man must come to the warehouse and
purchase other salt, make a declaration, carry off a certificate and
show this at every visit of inspection.  So much the worse for him if
he has not the wherewithal to pay for this supplementary salt; he has
only to sell his pig and abstain from meat at Christmas.  This is the
more frequent case, and I dare say that, for the métayers who pay
twenty-five francs per annum, it is the usual case.   -  It is
forbidden to make use of any other salt for the pot and salt-cellar
than that of the seven pounds.  "I am able to cite," says Letrosne,
"two sisters residing one league from a town in which the warehouse is
open only on Saturday.  Their supply was exhausted.  To pass three or
four days until Saturday comes they boil a remnant of brine from which
they extract a few ounces of salt.  A visit from the clerk ensues and a
procès-verbal.  Having friends and protectors this costs them only
forty-eight livres."   -  It is forbidden to take water from the ocean
and from other saline sources, under a penalty of from twenty to forty
livres fine.  It is forbidden to water cattle in marshes and other
places containing salt, under penalty of confiscation and a fine of
three hundred livres.  It is forbidden to put salt into the bellies of
mackerel on returning from fishing, or between their superposed
layers.  An order prescribes one pound and a half to a barrel.  Another
order prescribes the destruction annually of the natural salt formed
in certain cantons in Provence.  Judges are prohibited from moderating
or reducing the penalties imposed in salt cases, under penalty of
accountability and of deposition.   -  I pass over quantities of
orders and prohibitions, existing by hundreds.  This legislation
encompasses tax-payers like a net with a thousand meshes, while the
official who casts it is interested in finding them at fault.  We see
the fisherman, accordingly, unpacking his barrel, the housewife
seeking a certificate for her hams, the exciseman inspecting the
buffet, testing the brine, peering into the salt-box and, if it is of
good quality, declaring it contraband because that of the ferme, the
only legitimate salt, is usually adulterated and mixed with plaster.

Meanwhile, other officials, those of the excise, descend into the
cellar.  None are more formidable, nor who more eagerly seize on
pretexts for delinquency[34].  "Let a citizen charitably bestow a
bottle of wine on a poor feeble creature and he is liable to
prosecution and to excessive penalties.  .  .  .  The poor invalid that
may interest his curate in the begging of a bottle of wine for him
will undergo a trial, ruining not alone the unfortunate man that
obtains it, but again the benefactor who gave it to him.  This is not a
fancied story." By virtue of the right of deficient revenue the clerks
may, at any hour, take an inventory of wine on hand, even the stores
of a vineyard proprietor, indicate what he may consume, tax him for
the rest and for the surplus quantity already drunk, the ferme thus
associating itself with the wine-producer and claiming its portion of
his production.   -  In a vine-yard at Epernay[35] on four casks of
wine, the average product of one arpent, and worth six hundred francs,
it levies, at first, thirty francs, and then, after the sale of the
four casks, seventy five francs additionally.  Naturally, "the
inhabitants resort to the shrewdest and best planned artifices to
escape" such potent rights.  But the clerks are alert, watchful, and
well-informed, and they pounce down unexpectedly on every suspected
domicile; their instructions prescribe frequent inspections and exact
registries "enabling them to see at a glance the condition of the
cellar of each inhabitant."[36]  -  The manufacturer having paid up,
the merchant now has his turn.  The latter, on sending the four casks
to the consumer  -  again pays seventy-five francs to the ferme.  The
wine is dispatched and the ferme prescribes the roads by which it must
go; should others be taken it is confiscated, and at every step on the
way some payment must be made.  "A boat laden with wine from
Languedoc,[37] Dauphiny or Roussillon, ascending the Rhone and
descending the Loire to reach Paris, through the Briare canal, pays on
the way, leaving out charges on the Rhone, from thirty-five to forty
kinds of duty, not comprising the charges on entering Paris." It pays
these "at fifteen or sixteen places, the multiplied payments obliging
the carriers to devote twelve or fifteen days more to the passage than
they otherwise would if their duties could be paid at one bureau."   -
The charges on the routes by water are particularly heavy.  "From
Pontarlier to Lyons there are twenty-five or thirty tolls; from Lyons
to Aigues-Mortes there are others, so that whatever costs ten sous in
Burgundy, amounts to fifteen and eighteen sous at Lyons, and to over
twenty-five sous at Aigues-Mortes."   -  The wine at last reaches the
barriers of the city where it is to be drunk.  Here it pays an
octroi[38] of forty-seven francs per hogshead.   -  Entering Paris it
goes into the tapster's or innkeeper's cellar where it again pays from
thirty to forty francs for the duty on selling it at retail; at Rethel
the duty is from fifty to sixty francs per puncheon, Rheims gauge.   -
The total is exorbitant.  "At Rennes,[39] the dues and duties on a
hogshead (or barrel) of Bordeaux wine, together with a fifth over and
above the tax, local charges, eight sous per pound and the octroi,
amount to more than seventy-two livres exclusive of the purchase
money; to which must be added the expenses and duties advanced by the
Rennes merchant and which he recovers from the purchaser, Bordeaux
drayage, freight, insurance, tolls of the flood-gate, entrance duty
into the town, hospital dues, fees of gaugers, brokers and inspectors.
The total outlay for the tapster who sells a barrel of wine amounts to
two hundred livres." We may imagine whether, at this price, the people
of Rennes drink it, while these charges fall on the wine-grower,
since, if consumers do not purchase, he is unable to sell.

Accordingly, among the small growers, he is the most to be pitied;
according to the testimony of Arthur Young, wine-grower and misery are
two synonymous terms.  The crop often fails, "every doubtful crop
ruining the man without capital." In Burgundy, in Berry, in
Soisonnais, in the Trois-Evêche's, in Champagne,[40] I find in every
report that he lacks bread and lives on alms.  In Champagne, the
syndics of Bar-sur-Aube write[41] that the inhabitants, to escape
duties, have more than once emptied their wine into the river, the
provincial assembly declaring that "in the greater portion of the
province the slightest augmentation of duties would cause the
cultivators to desert the soil."   -  Such is the history of wine
under the ancient regime.  From the producer who grows to the tapster
who sells, what extortions and what vexations! As to the salt-tax,
according to the comptroller-general,[42] this annually produces 4,000
domiciliary seizures, 3,400 imprisonments, 500 sentences to flogging,
exile and the galleys.   -

If ever two taxes were well combined, not only to despoil, but also
to irritate the peasantry, the poor and the people, here they were.



VI.  BURDENS AND EXEMPTIONS.

Why taxation is so burdensome.  - Exemptions and privileges.

Evidently the burden of taxation forms the chief cause of misery;
hence an accumulated, deep-seated hatred against the fisc and its
agents, receivers, store-house keepers, excise officials, customs
officers and clerks.  -  But why is taxation so burdensome? As far as
the communes which annually plead in detail against certain gentlemen
to subject them to the taille are concerned, there is no doubt.  What
renders the charge oppressive is the fact that the strongest and those
best able to bear taxation succeed in evading it, the prime cause of
misery being the vastness of the exemptions[43].

Let us look at each of these exemptions, one tax after another.   -
In the first place, not only are nobles and ecclesiastics exempt from
the personal taille but again, as we have already seen, they are
exempt from the cultivator's taille, through cultivating their domains
themselves or by a steward.  In Auvergne,[44] in the single election-
district of Clermont, fifty parishes are enumerated in which, owing to
this arrangement, every estate of a privileged person is exempt, the
taille falling wholly on those subject to it.  Furthermore, it suffices
for a privileged person to maintain that his farmer is only a steward,
which is the case in Poitou in several parishes, the subdelegate and
the élu not daring to look into the matter too closely.  In this way
the privileged classes escape the taille, they and their property,
including their farms.   -  Now, the taille, ever augmenting, is that
which provides, through its special delegations, such a vast number of
new offices.  A man of the Third-Estate has merely to run through the
history of its periodical increase to see how it alone, or almost
alone, paid and is paying[45] for the construction of bridges, roads,
canals and courts of justice, for the purchase of offices, for the
establishment and support of houses of refuge, insane asylums,
nurseries, post-houses for horses, fencing and riding schools, for
paving and sweeping Paris, for salaries of lieutenants-general,
governors, and provincial commanders, for the fees of bailiffs,
seneschals and vice-bailiffs, for the salaries of financial and
election officials and of commissioners dispatched to the provinces,
for those of the police of the watch and I know not how many other
purposes.   -   In the provinces which hold assemblies, where the
taille would seem to be more justly apportioned, the like inequality
is found.  In Burgundy[46] the expenses of the police, of public
festivities, of keeping horses, all sums appropriated to the courses
of lectures on chemistry, botany, anatomy and parturition, to the
encouragement of the arts, to subscriptions to the chancellorship, to
franking letters, to presents given to the chiefs and subalterns of
commands, to salaries of officials of the provincial assemblies, to
the ministerial secretaryship, to expenses of levying taxes and even
alms, in short, 1,800,000 livres are spent in the public service at
the charge of the Third-Estate, the two higher orders not paying a
cent.

In the second place, with respect to the poll-tax, originally
distributed among twenty-two classes and intended to bear equally on
all according to fortunes, we know that, from the first, the clergy
buy themselves off; and, as to the nobles, they manage so well as to
have their tax reduced proportionately with its increase at the
expense of the Third-Estate.  A count or a marquis, an intendant or a
master of requests, with 40,000 livres income, who, according to the
tariff of 1695,[47] should pay from 1,700 to 2,500 livres, pays only
400 livres, while a bourgeois with 6,000 livres income, and who,
according to the same tariff; should pay 70 livres, pays 720.  The
poll-tax of the privileged individual is thus diminished three-
quarters or five-sixths, while that of the taille-payer has increased
tenfold.  In the Ile-de-France,[48] on an income of 240 livres, the
taille-payer pays twenty-one livres eight sous, and the nobles three
livres, and the intendant himself states that he taxes the nobles only
an eightieth of their revenue; that of Orléanais taxes them only a
hundredth, while, on the other hand, those subject to the taille are
assessed one-eleventh.   -  If other privileged parties are added to
the nobles, such as officers of justice, employee's of the fermes, and
exempted townsmen, a group is formed embracing nearly everybody rich
or well-off and whose revenue certainly greatly surpasses that of
those who are subject to the taille.  Now, the budgets of the
provincial assemblies inform us how much each province levies on each
of the two groups: in the Lyonnais district those subject to the
taille pay 898,000 livres, the privileged, 190,000; in the Ile-de-
France, the former pay 2,689,000 livres and the latter 232,000; in the
generalship of Alençon, the former pay 1,067,000 livres and the latter
122,000; in Champagne, the former pay 1,377,000 livres, and the latter
199,000; in Haute-Guyenne, the former pay 1,268,000 livres, and the
latter 61,000; in the generalship of Auch, the former pay 797,000
livres, the privileged 21,000; in Auvergne the former pay 1,753,000
livres and the latter 86,000; in short, summing up the total of ten
provinces, 11,636,000 livres paid by the poor group and 1,450,000
livres by the rich group, the latter paying eight times less than it
ought to pay.

With respect to the vingtièmes, the disproportion is less, the
precise amounts not being attainable; we may nevertheless assume that
the assessment of the privileged class is about one-half of what it
should be.  "In 1772," says[49] M. de Calonne, "it was admitted that
the vingtièmes were not carried to their full value.  False
declarations, counterfeit leases, too favorable conditions granted to
almost all the wealthy proprietors gave rise to inequalities and
countless errors.  A verification of 4,902 parishes shows that the
product of the two vingtièmes amounting to 54,000,000 should have
amounted to 81,000,000." A seigniorial domain which, according to its
own return of income, should pay 2,400 livres, pays only 1,216.  The
case is much worse with the princes of the blood; we have seen that
their domains are exempt and pay only 188,000 livres instead of
2,400,000.  Under this system, which crushes the weak to relieve the
strong, the more capable one is of contributing, the less one
contributes.   -  The same story characterizes the fourth and last
direct taxation, namely, the tax substituted for the corvée.  This tax,
attached, at first, to the vingtièmes and consequently extending to
all proprietors, through an act of the Council is attached to the
taille and, consequently, bears on those the most burdened[50].  Now
this tax amounts to an extra of one-quarter added to the principal of
the taille, of which one example may be cited, that of Champagne,
where, on every 100 livres income the sum of six livres five sous
devolves on the taille-payer.  "Thus," says the provincial assembly,
"every road used by active commerce, by the multiplied coursing of the
rich, is repaired wholly by the contributions of the poor."  -  As
these figures spread out before the eye we involuntarily recur to the
two animals in the fable, the horse and the mule traveling together on
the same road; the horse, by right, may prance along as he pleases;
hence his load is gradually transferred to the mule, the beast of
burden, which finally sinks beneath the extra load.

Not only, in the corps of tax-payers, are the privileged
disburdened to the detriment of the taxable, but again, in the corps
of the taxable, the rich are relieved to the injury of the poor, to
such an extent that the heaviest portion of the load finally falls on
the most indigent and most laborious class, on the small proprietor
cultivating his own field, on the simple artisan with nothing but his
tools and his hands, and, in general, on the inhabitants of villages.
In the first place, in the matter of taxes, a number of the towns are
"abonnées," or free.  Compiègne, for the taille and its accessories,
with 1,671 firesides, pays only 8,000 francs, whilst one of the
villages in its neighborhood, Canly, with 148 firesides, pays 4,475
francs[51].  In the poll-tax, Versailles, Saint-Germain, Beauvais,
Etampes, Pontoise, Saint-Denis, Compiegne, Fontainebleau, taxed in the
aggregate at 169,000 livres, are two-thirds exempt, contributing but
little more than one franc, instead of three francs ten sous, per head
of the population; at Versailles it is still less, since for 70,000
inhabitants the poll-tax amounts to only 51,600 francs[52].  Besides,
in any event, on the apportionment of a tax, the bourgeois of the town
is favored above his rural neighbors.  Accordingly, "the inhabitants of
the country, who depend on the town and are comprehended in its
functions, are treated with a rigor of which it would be difficult to
form an idea.  .  .  .  Town influence is constantly throwing the burden
on those who are trying to be relieved of it, the richest of citizens
paying less taille than the most miserable of the peasant
farmers[53]." Hence, "the horror of the taille depopulates the rural
districts, concentrating in the towns all the talents and all the
capital[54]." Outside of the towns there is the same differences.  Each
year, the élus and their collectors, exercising arbitrary power, fix
the taille of the parish and of each inhabitant.  In these ignorant and
partial hands the scales are not held by equity but by self-interest,
local hatreds, the desire for revenge, the necessity of favoring some
friend, relative, neighbor, protector, or patron, some powerful or
some dangerous person.  The intendant of Moulins, on visiting his
generalship, finds "people of influence paying nothing, while the poor
are over-charged." That of Dijon writes that "the basis of
apportionment is arbitrary, to such an extent that the people of the
province must not be allowed to suffer any longer."[55] In the
generalship of Rouen "some parishes pay over four sous the livre and
others scarcely one sou."[56] "For three years past that I have lived
in the  country," writes a lady of the same district, "I have remarked
that most of the wealthy proprietors are the least pressed; they are
selected to make the apportionment, and the people are always
abused."[57]  -   "I live on an estate ten leagues from Paris," wrote
d'Argenson, "where it was desired to assess the taille
proportionately, but only injustice has been the outcome since the
seigniors made use of their influence to relieve their own tenants."
[58]  Besides, in addition to those who, through favor, diminish their
taille, there are others who buy themselves off entirely.  An
intendant, visiting the subdelegation of Bar-sur-Seine, observes" that
the rich cultivators succeed in obtaining petty commissions in
connection with the king's household and enjoy the privileges attached
to these, which throws the burden of taxation on the others."[59]
"One of the leading causes of our prodigious taxation," says the
provincial assembly of Auvergne, "is the inconceivable number of the
privileged, which daily increases through traffic in and the
assignment of offices; cases occur in which these have ennobled six
families in less than twenty years." Should this abuse continue, "in a
hundred years every tax-payer the most capable of supporting taxation
will be ennobled."[60] Observe, moreover, that an infinity of offices
and functions, without conferring nobility, exempt their titularies
from the personal taille and reduce their poll-tax to the fortieth of
their income; at first, all public functionaries, administrative or
judicial, and next all employments in the salt-department, in the
customs, in the post-office, in the royal domains, and in the
excise.[61] "There are few parishes," writes an intendant, "in which
these employees are not found, while several contain as many as two or
three."[62] A postmaster is exempt from the taille, in all his
possessions and offices, and even on his farms to the extent of a
hundred arpents.  The notaries of Angoulême are exempt from the corvée,
from collections, and the lodging of soldiers, while neither their
sons or chief clerks can be drafted in the militia.  On closely
examining the great fiscal net in administrative correspondence, we
detect at every step some meshes through which, with a bit of effort
and cunning, all the big and average-sized fish escape; the small fry
alone remain at the bottom of the scoop.  A surgeon not an apothecary,
a man of good family forty-five years old, in commerce, but living
with his parent and in a province with a written code, escapes the
collector.  The same immunity is extended to the begging agents of the
monks of "la Merci" and "L'Etroite Observance." Throughout the South
and the East individuals in easy circumstances purchase this
commission of beggar for a "louis," or for ten crowns, and, putting
three livres in a cup, go about presenting it in this or that
parish:[63] ten of the inhabitants of a small mountain village and
five inhabitants in the little village of Treignac obtain their
discharge in this fashion.  Consequently, "the collections fall on the
poor, always powerless and often insolvent," the privileged who effect
the ruin of the tax-payer causing the deficiencies of the treasury.



VII.  MUNICIPAL TAXATION.

The octrois of towns.  - The poor the greatest sufferers.

One word more to complete the picture.  People seek shelter in the
towns and, indeed, compared with the country, the towns are a refuge.
But misery accompanies the poor, for, on the one hand, they are
involved in debt, and, on the other, the closed circles administering
municipal affairs impose taxation on the poor.  The towns being
oppressed by the fisc, they in their turn oppress the people by
passing to them the load which the king had imposed.  Seven times in
twenty-eight years[64] he withdraws and re-sells the right of
appointing their municipal officers, and, to get rid of "this enormous
financial burden," the towns double their octrois.  At present,
although liberated, they still make payment; the annual charge has
become a perpetual charge; never does the fisc release its hold; once
beginning to suck it continues to suck.  "Hence, in Brittany," says an
intendant, "not a town is there whose expenses are not greater than
its revenue."[65]  They are unable to mend their pavements, and repair
their streets, "the approaches to them being almost impracticable."
What could they do for self-support, obliged, as they are, to pay over
again after having already paid? Their augmented octrois, in 1748,
ought to furnish during a period of eleven years a total of 606,000
livres; but, the eleven years having lapsed, the tax authorities, in
spite of having been paid, still maintains its exigencies, and to such
an extent that, in 1774, they have contributed 2,071,052 livres, the
provisional octroi being still maintained.   -  Now, this exorbitant
octroi bears heavily everywhere on the most indispensable necessities,
the artisan being more heavily burdened than the bourgeois.  In Paris,
as we have seen above, wine pays forty-seven livres a hogshead
entrance duty which, at the present standard of value, must be
doubled.  "A turbot, taken on the coast at Harfleur and brought by
post, pays an entrance duty of eleven times its value, the people of
the capital therefore being condemned to dispense with fish from the
sea."[66]  At the gates of Paris, in the little parish of
Aubervilliers, I find "excessive duties on hay, straw, seeds, tallow,
candles, eggs, sugar, fish, faggots and firewood."[67] Compiegne pays
the whole amount of its taille by means of a tax on beverages and
cattle[68].  "In Toul and in Verdun the taxes are so onerous that but
few consent to remain in the town, except those kept there by their
offices and by old habits."[69]  At Coulommiers, "the merchants and
the people are so severely taxed they dread undertaking any
enterprise." Popular hatred everywhere is profound against octroi,
barrier and clerk.  The bourgeois oligarchy everywhere first cares for
itself before caring for those it governs.  At Nevers and at
Moulins,[70] "all rich persons find means to escape their turn to
collect taxes by belonging to different commissions or through their
influence with the élus, to such an extent that the collectors of
Nevers, of the present and preceding year, might be mistaken for real
beggars; there is hardly any small village whose tax collectors are
solvent, since the tenant farmers (métayers) have had to be
appointed." At Angers, "independent of presents and candles, which
annually consume 2,172 livres, the public pence are employed and
wasted in clandestine outlays according to the fancy of the municipal
officers." In Provence, where the communities are free to tax
themselves and where they might be expected to show some consideration
for the poor, "most of the towns, and notably Aix, Marseilles and
Toulon,[71] pay their impositions," local and general, "exclusively by
the tax called the "piquet." This is a tax "on all species of flour
belonging to and consumed on the territory;" for example, of 254,897
livres, which Toulon expends, the piquet furnishes 233,405.  Thus the
taxation falls wholly on the people, while the bishop, the marquis,
the president, the merchant of importance pay less on their dinner of
delicate fish and becaficos than the caulker or porter on his two
pounds of bread rubbed with a piece of garlic! Bread in this country
is already too dear! And the quality is so poor that Malouet, the
intendant of the marine, refuses to let his workmen eat it!

"Sire," said M. de la Fare, bishop of Nancy, from his pulpit, May
4th, 1789, "Sire, the people over which you reign has given
unmistakable proofs of its patience.  .  .  .  They are martyrs in whom
life seems to have been allowed to remain to enable them to suffer the
longer."



VIII.  COMPLAINTS IN THE REGISTERS[72].


"I am miserable because too much is taken from me.  Too much is
taken from me because not enough is taken from the privileged.  Not
only do the privileged force me to pay in their place, but, again,
they previously deduct from my earnings their ecclesiastic and feudal
dues.  When, out of my income of 100 francs, I have parted with fifty-
three francs, and more, to the collector, I am obliged again to give
fourteen francs to the seignior, also more than fourteen for
tithes,[73] and, out of the remaining eighteen or nineteen francs, I
have additionally to satisfy the excise men.  I alone, a poor man, pay
two governments, one the old government, local and now absent,
useless, inconvenient and humiliating, and active only through
annoyances, exemptions and taxes; and the other, recent, centralized,
everywhere present, which, taking upon itself all functions, has vast
needs, and makes my meager shoulders support its enormous weight."

These, in precise terms, are the vague ideas beginning to ferment
in the popular brain and encountered on every page of the records of
the States-General.

"Would to God," says a Normandy village,[74] "the monarch might
take into his own hands the defense of the miserable citizen pelted
and oppressed by clerks, seigniors, justiciary and clergy!"

 "Sire," writes a village in Champagne,[75] "the only message to us
on your part is a demand for money.  We were led to believe that this
might cease, but every year the demand comes for more.  We do not hold
you responsible for this because we love you, but those whom you
employ, who better know how to manage their own affairs than yours.  We
believed that you were deceived by them and we, in our chagrin, said
to ourselves, If our good king only knew of this! .  .  .  We are crushed
down with every species of taxation; thus far we have given you a part
of our bread, and, should this continue, we shall be in want.  .  .  .
Could you see the miserable tenements in which we live, the poor food
we eat, you would feel for us; this would prove to you better than
words that we can support this no longer and that it must be lessened.
.  .  .  That which grieves us is that those who possess the most, pay
the least.  We pay the tailles and for our implements, while the
ecclesiastics and nobles who own the best land pay nothing.  Why do the
rich pay the least and the poor the most? Should not each pay
according to his ability? Sire, we entreat that things may be so
arranged, for that is just.  .  .  .  Did we dare, we should undertake to
plant the slopes with vines; but we are so persecuted by the clerks of
the excise we would rather pull up those already planted; the wine
that we could make would all go to them, scarcely any of it remaining
for ourselves.  These exactions are a great scourge and, to escape
them, we would rather let the ground lie waste.  .  .  .  Relieve us of
all these extortions and of the excisemen; we are great sufferers
through all these devices; now is the time to change them; never shall
we be happy as long as these last.  We entreat all this of you, Sire,
along with others of your subjects as wearied as ourselves.  .  .  .  We
would entreat yet more but you cannot do all at one time."

Imposts and privileges, in the really popular registers, are the
two enemies against which complaints everywhere arise[76].

"We are overwhelmed by demands for subsidies, .  .  .  we are burdened
with taxes beyond our strength, .  .  .  we do not feel able to support
any more, we perish, overpowered by the sacrifices demanded of us.
Labor is taxed while indolence is exempt.  .  .  .  Feudalism is the most
disastrous of abuses, the evils it causes surpassing those of hail and
lightning.  .  .  .  Subsistence is impossible if three-quarters of the
crops are to be taken for field-rents, terrage, etc.  .  .  .  The
proprietor has a fourth part, the décimateur a twelfth, the harvester
a twelfth, taxation a tenth, not counting the depredations of vast
quantities of game which devour the growing crops: nothing is left for
the poor cultivator but pain and sorrow."

Why should the Third-Estate alone pay for roads on which the nobles
and the clergy drive in their carriages? Why are the poor alone
subject to militia draft? Why does "the subdelegate cause only the
defenseless and the unprotected to be drafted?" Why does it suffice to
be the servant of a privileged person to escape this service? Destroy
those dove-cotes, formerly only small pigeon-pens and which now
contain as many as 5,000 pairs.  Abolish the barbarous rights of
"motte, quevaise and domaine congéable[77] under which more than
500,000 persons still suffer in Lower Brittany." "You have in your
armies, Sire, more than 30,000 Franche-Comté serfs;" should one of
these become an officer and be pensioned out of the service he would
be obliged to return to and live in the hut in which he was born,
otherwise; at his death, the seignior will take his pittance.  Let
there be no more absentee prelates, nor abbés-commendatory.  "The
present deficit is not to be paid by us but by the bishops and
beneficiaries; deprive the princes of the church of two-thirds of
their revenues." "Let feudalism be abolished.  Man, the peasant
especially, is tyrannically bowed down to the impoverished ground on
which he lies exhausted.  .  .  .  There is no freedom, no prosperity, no
happiness where the soil is enthralled.  .  .  .  Let the lord's dues, and
other odious taxes not feudal, be abolished, a thousand times returned
to the privileged.  Let feudalism content itself with its iron scepter
without adding the poniard of the revenue speculator."[78]

 Here, and for some time before this, it is not the Countryman who
speaks but the procureur, the lawyer, who places professional
metaphors and theories at his service.  But the lawyer has simply
translated the countryman's sentiments into literary dialect.

___________________________________________________________________

Notes:

[1]"Collection des économistes," II.  832.  See a tabular statement
by Beaudan.

[2] "Ephémérides du citoyen," IX.  15; an article by M. de Butré,
1767.

[3] "Collection des économistes," I.  551, 562.

[4] "Procès-verbaux de l'assemblée provinciale de Champagne"
(1787), p.  240.

[5] Cf., "Notice historique sur la Révolution dans le département de
l'Eure," by Boivin-Champeaux, p.  37.  - A register of grievances of the
parish of Epreville; on 100 francs income the Treasury takes 22 for
the taille,  16 for collaterals, 15 for the poll-tax, 11 for the
vingtièmes, total 67 livres.

[6] "Procès-verbaux de l'assemblée provinciale de Ile-de-France
(1787), p.  131.

[7] "Procèx-verbaux de l'ass.  prov de la Haute-Guyenne" (1784), II.
17, 40, 47.

[8] "Procès-verbaux de l'ass.  prov.  d'Auvergne" (1787), p.  253.  -
Doléances, by Gautier de Biauzat, member of the council elected by the
provincial assembly of Auvergne.  (1788), p.3.

[9] See note 5 at the end of the volume.

[10] "Théron de Montaugé," p.  109 (1763).  Wages at this time are
from 7 to 12 sous a day during the summer.

[11] Archives nationales, procès-verbaux and registers of the
States-General, V.  59, p.  6.  Memorandum to M. Necker from M. d'Orgeux,
honorary councilor to the Parliament of Bourgogne, 25 Oct.  1788..

[12] Ibid.  H, 1418.  A letter of the intendant of Limoges, Feb.  26,
1784.

[13] Turgot, II.  259.

[14] Archives nationales, H, 426 (remonstrances of the Parliament
of Brittany, Feb.  1783).

[15] Mercier; XI.  59; X.  262.

[16] Archives nationales, H, 1422, a letter by M d'Aine, intendant
of Limoges (February 17, 1782) one by the intendant of Moulins (April,
1779); the trial of the community of Mollon (Bordelais), and the
tables of its collectors.

[17] "Procès-verbaux de l'ass.  prov.  d'Auvergne," p.  266.

[18] Albert Babeau, "Histoire de Troyes," I.  72

[19] " Procés-verbaux de l'ass.  prov.  de Berry" (1778), I.  pp.72,
80.

[20] De Tocqueville, 187.

[21] Archives nationales, H, 1417.  (A letter of M. de Cypièrre,
intendant at Orleans, April 17, 1765).

[22] "Traité de Population," 2d part, p.26.

[23] Archives nationales, H, 1417.  (A letter of M. de Cypièrre,
intendant at Orleans, April 17, 1765).

[24] Ibid.  H, 1418.  (Letter of May 28, 1784).

[25] Ibid.  (Letter of the intendant of Tours, June 15, 1765.)

[26] Archives Nationales, H, 1417.  A report by Raudon, receiver of
tailles in the election of Laon, January, 1764.

[27] "Procèx-verbaux de l'ass.  prov.  de Berry" (1778), I.  p.72.

[28] Champfort, 93.

[29] "Procèx-verbaux de l'ass.  prov.  de Berry," I.  77.

[30] Arthur Young, II.  205.

[31] "Procès-verbaux of the ass.  prov.  of the generalship of Rouen"
(1787), p.271.

[32] Letrosne (1779).  "De l'administration provinciale et de Ia
reforme de l'impôt," pp.  39 to 262 and 138.  - Archives nationales, H.
138 (1782).  Cahier de Bugey, "Salt costs a person living in the
countryside purchasing it from the retailers from 15 to 17 sous a
pound, according to the way of measuring it.

[33] Floquet, VI.  367 (May 10, 1760).

[34] Boivin-Champeaux, p.44.  (Cahiers of Bray and of Gamaches).

[35] Arthur Young, II.  175-178.

[36] Archives nationales, G, 300; G, 319.  (Registers and
instructions of various local directors of the Excise to their
successors).

[37] Letrosne, ibid.  523.

[38] Octroi: a toll or tax levied at the gates of a city on
articles brought in.  (SR.)

[39] Archives Nationales, H, 426 (Papers of the Parliament of
Brittany, February, 1783).

[40] "Procès-verbaux de l'ass.  prov.  de Soissonnais" (1787), p.45.
- Archives nationales, H, 1515 (Remonstrances of the Parliament of
Metz, 1768).  The class of indigents form more than twelve-thirteenths
of the whole number of villages of laborers and generally those of the
wine-growers." Ibid.  G, 319 (Tableau des directions of Chateaudon and
Issoudun),

[41] Albert Babeau, I.  89.  p.  21.

[42] "Mémoires," presented to the Assembly of Notables, by M. de
Calonne (1787), p.67.

[43] Here we are at the root of the reason why democratically
elected politicians and their administrative staffs are today taxed
even though such taxation is only a paper-exercise adding costs to the
cost of government administration.  (SR.)

[44] Gautier de Bianzat, "Doléances," 193, 225.  "Procès-verbaux de
l'ass.  prov.  de Poitou" (1787), p.99.

[45] Gautier de Bianzat, ibid..

[46] Archives nationales, the procès-verbaux and cahiers of the
States-General, V.  59.  P.  6.  (Letter of M. Orgeux to M. Necker), V.
27.  p.  560-573.  (Cahiers of the Third-Estate of Arnay-le-Duc)

[47] In these figures the rise of the money standard has been kept
in mind, the silver "marc," worth 59 francs in 1965, being worth 49
francs during the last half of the eighteenth century.

[48] "Procès-verbaux de l'ass.  prov.  de Ile-de-France," 132, 158;
de l'Orléanais, 96, 387.

[49] "Mémoire," presented to the Assembly of Notables (1787), p.  1.
-  See note 2 at the end of the volume, on the estate of Blet.

[50] "Procès-verbeaux de l'ass.  prov.  d'Alsace" (1787), p.  116;"  -
of Champagne," 192.  (According to a declaration of June 2, 1787, the
tax substituted for the corvée may be extended to one-sixth of the
taille, with accessory taxes and the poll-tax combined).  "De la
généralité d'Alençcon," 179; "  -   du Berry," I.  218.

[51] Archives nationales, G, 322 (Memorandum on the excise dues of
Compiègne and its neighborhood, 1786)

[52] "Procès-verbaux de l'ass.  prov.  de l'Ile-de-France," p.  104.

[53] "Procès-verbaux de l'ass.  prov.  de Berry, I.  85, II.  91.  "  -
de l'Orléanais, p.  225." "Arbitrariness, injustice, inequality, are
inseparable from the taille when any change of collector takes place."

[54] "Archives Nationales," H.  615.  Letter of M. de Lagourda, a
noble from Bretagne, to M. Necker, dated December 4, 1780: " You are
always taxing the useful and necessary people who decrease in numbers
all the time: these are the workers of the land.  The countryside has
become deserted and no one will any longer plow the land.  I testify to
God and to you, Sir, that we have lost more than a third of our
budding wheat of the last harvest because we did not have the
necessary man-power do to the work."

[55] Ibid.  1149.  (letter of M. de Reverseau, March 16, 1781); H,
200 (letter of M. Amelot, Nov.  2, 1784).

[56] "Procès-verbaux de l'ass.  prov.  de la généralite de Rouen,"
p.91.

[57] Hippeau, VI.  22 (1788).

[58] D'Argenson.  VI.  37.

[59] Archives nationales, H.  200 (Memoir of M. Amelot, 1785).

[60] Procès-verbaux de l'ass.  prov.  d'Auvergne," 253.

[61] Boivin-Champeaux, "Doléances de la parvisse de Tilleul-
Lambert" (Eure).  "Numbers of privileged characters, Messieurs of the
elections, Messieurs the post-masters, Messieurs the presidents and
other attachés of the salt-warehouse, every individual possessing
extensive property pays but a third or a half of the taxes they ought
to pay."

[62] De Tocqueville, 385.  - "Procès-verbaux de l'ass.  prov.  de
Lyonnais," p.  56

[63] Archives nationales, H, 1422.  (Letters of M. d'Aine,
intendant, also of the receiver for the election of Tulle, February
23, 1783).

[64] De Tocqueville, 64, 363.

[65] Archives nationales, H, 612, 614.  (Letters of M. de la Bove,
September 11, and Dec.  2, 1774; June 28, 1777).

[66] Mercier, II.  62.

[67] "Grievances" of the parish of Aubervilliers.

[68] Archives nationales, G, 300; G, 322 ("Mémoires" on the excise
duties).

[69] "Procès-verbaux de l'ass.  prov.  des Trois-Evêchés p.  442.

[70] Archives nationales, H, 1422 (Letter of the intendant of
Moulins, April 1779).

[71] Archives nationales, H.  1312 (Letters of M. D'Antheman
procureur-général of the excise court (May 19, 1783), and of the
Archbishop of Aix (June 15, 1783).) - Provence produced wheat only
sufficient for seven and a half months' consumption.

[72] Abbreviation for the "cahier des doléances", in English
'register of grieviances', brought with them by the representatives of
the people to the great gathering in Paris of the "States-Généraux" in
1789.  (SR.)

[73] The feudal dues may be estimated at a seventh of the net
income and the dime also at a seventh.  These are the figures given by
the ass.  prov.  of Haute-Guyenne (Procès-verbaux, p.  47).  - Isolated
instances, in other provinces, indicate similar results.  The dime
ranges from a tenth to the thirteenth of the gross product, and
commonly the tenth.  I regard the average as about the fourteenth, and
as one-half of the gross product must he deducted for expenses of
cultivation, it amounts to one-seventh.  Letrosne says a fifth and even
a quarter.

[74] Boivin-Champeaux, 72.

[75] Grievances of the community of Culmon (Election de Langres.)

[76] Boivin-Champeaux, 34, 36, 41, 48.  - Périn ("Doléances des
paroisses rurales de l'Artuis," 301, 308).  - Archives nationales,
procès-verbaux and cahiers of the States-Géneraux, vol.  XVII.  P.  12
(Letter of the inhabitants of Dracy-le Viteux).

[77] Motte: a mound indicative of Seigniorial dominion; quevaise;
the right of forcing a resident to remain on his property under
penalty of forfeiture; domaine congéable; property held subject to
capricious ejection.  (TR)

[78] Prud'homme, "Résumé des cahiers," III.  passim, and especially
from 317 to 340.






CHAPTER III.  INTELLECTUAL STATE OF THE PEOPLE.

I.

Intellectual incapacity.  - How ideas are transformed into marvelous
stories.

  To comprehend their actions we ought now to look into the
condition of their minds, to know the current train of their ideas,
their mode of thinking.  But is it really essential to draw this
portrait, and are not the details of their mental condition we have
just presented sufficient? We shall obtain a knowledge of them later,
and through their actions, when, in Touraine, they knock a mayor and
his assistant, chosen by themselves, senseless with kicks from their
wooden shoes, because, in obeying the national Assembly, these two
unfortunate men prepared a table of taxes; or when at Troyes, they
drag through the streets and tear to pieces the venerable magistrate
who was nourishing them at that very moment, and who had just dictated
his testament in their favor.-Take the still rude brain of a
contemporary peasant and deprive it of the ideas which, for eighty
years past, have entered it by so many channels, through the primary
school of each village, through the return home of the conscript after
seven years' service, through the prodigious multiplication of books,
newspapers, roads, railroads, foreign travel and every other species
of communication.[1] Try to imagine the peasant of the eighteenth
century, penned and shut up from father to son in his hamlet, without
parish highways, deprived of news, with no instruction but the Sunday
sermon, continuously worrying about his daily bread and the taxes,
"with his wretched, dried-up aspect,"[2] not daring to repair his
house, always persecuted, distrustful, his mind contracted and
stinted, so to say, by misery.  His condition is almost that of his ox
or his ass, while his ideas are those of his condition.  He has been a
long time stolid; "he lacks even instinct,"[3] mechanically and
fixedly regarding the ground on which he drags along his hereditary
plow.  In 1751, d'Argenson wrote in his journal:

 "nothing in the news from the court affects them; the reign is
indifferent to them.  .  .  .  .  the distance between the capital and the
province daily widens.  .  .  .  Here they are ignorant of the striking
occurrences that most impressed us at Paris.  .  .  .The inhabitants of
the country side are merely poverty-stricken slaves, draft cattle
under a yoke, moving on as they are goaded, caring for nothing and
embarrassed by nothing, provided they can eat and sleep at regular
hours."

They make no complaints, "they do not even dream of
complaining;"[4] their wretchedness seems to them natural like winter
or hail.  Their minds, like their agriculture, still belong to the
middle ages.-In the environment of Toulouse,[5] to ascertain who
committed a robbery, to cure a man or a sick animal, they resort to a
sorcerer, who divines this by means of a sieve.  The countryman fully
believes in ghosts and, on All Saints' eve, he lays the cloth for the
dead.- In Auvergne, at the outbreak the Revolution, on a contagious
fever making its appearance, M. de Montlosier, declared to be a
sorcerer, is the cause of it, and two hundred men assemble together to
demolish his dwelling.  Their religious belief is on the same level.[6]
"Their priests drink with them and sell them absolution.  On Sundays,
at the sermon, they put up lieutenancies and sub-lieutenancies (among
the saints) for sale: so much for a lieutenant's place under St.
Peter! -  If the peasant hesitates in his bid, an eulogy of St.  Peter
at once begins, and then our peasants run it up fast enough." - To
intellects in a primitive state, barren of ideas and crowded with
images, idols on earth are as essential as idols in heaven.  "No doubt
whatever existed in my mind," says Rétit de la Bretonne,[7] "of the
power of the king to compel any man to bestow his wife or daughter on
me, and my village (Sacy, in Burgundy) thought as I did."[8] There is
no room in minds of this description for abstract conceptions, for any
idea of social order; they are submissive to it and that is all.  "The
mass of the people," writes Governor in 1789, "have no religion but
that of their priests, no law but that of those above them, no
morality but that of self-interest; these are the beings who, led on
by drunken curates, are now on the high road to liberty, and the first
use they make of it is to rebel on all sides because there is
dearth."[9]

How could things be otherwise? Every idea, previous to taking root
in their brain, must possess a legendary form, as absurd as it is
simple, adapted to their experiences, their faculties, their fears and
their aspirations.  Once planted in this uncultivated and fertile soil
it vegetates and becomes transformed, developing into gross
excrescences, somber foliage and poisonous fruit.  The more monstrous
the greater its vigor, clinging to the slightest of probabilities and
tenacious against the most certain of demonstrations.  Under Louis XV,
in an arrest of vagabonds, a few children having been carried off
willfully or by mistake, the rumor spreads that the king takes baths
in blood to restore his exhausted functions, and, so true does this
seem to be, the women, horrified through their maternal instincts,
join in the riot; a policeman is seized and knocked down, and, on his
demanding a confessor, a woman in the crowd, picking up a stone, cries
out that he must not have time to go to heaven, and smashes his head
with it, believing that she is performing an act of justice[10].  Under
Louis XVI evidence is presented to the people that there is no
scarcity: in 1789,  [11] an officer, listening to the conversation of
his soldiers, hears them state "with full belief that the princes and
courtiers, with a view to starve Paris out, are throwing flour into
the Seine." Turning to a quarter-master he asks him how he can
possibly believe such an absurd story.  "Lieutenant," he replies, "'tis
time - the bags were tied with blue strings (cordons bleus)." To them
this is a sufficient reason, and no argument could convince them to
the contrary.  Thus, among the dregs of society, foul and horrible
romances are forged, in connection the famine and the Bastille, in
which Louis XVI., the queen Marie Antoinette, the Comte d'Artois,
Madame de Lamballe, the Polignacs, the revenue farmers, the seigniors
and ladies of high rank are portrayed as vampires and ghouls.  I have
seen many editions of these in the pamphlets of the day, in the
engravings not exhibited, and among popular prints and illustrations,
the latter the most effective, since they appeal to the eye.  They
surpass the stories of Mandrin[12] and Cartouche, being exactly
suitable for men whose literature consists of the popular laments of
Mandrin and Cartouche.



II.

Political incapacity.  - Interpretation of political rumors and of
government action.

  By this we can judge of their political intelligence.  Every
object appears to them in a false light; they are like children who,
at each turn of the road, see in each tree or bush some frightful
hobgoblin.  Arthur Young, on visiting the springs near Clermont, is
arrested,[13] and the people want to imprison a woman, his guide, some
of the bystanders regarding him as an "agent of the Queen, who
intended to blow the town up with a mine, and send all that escaped to
the galleys." Six days after this, beyond Puy, and notwithstanding his
passport, the village guard come and take him out of bed at eleven
o'clock at nights, declaring that "I was undoubtedly a conspirator
with the Queen, the Count d'Artois and the Count d'Entragues (who has
property here), who had employed me as arpenteur to measure their
fields in order to double their taxes." We here take the unconscious,
apprehensive, popular imagination in the act; a slight indication, a
word, prompting the construction of either air castles or fantastic
dungeons, and seeing these as plainly as if they were so many
substantial realities.  They have not the inward resources that render
capable of separating and discerning; their conceptions are formed in
a lump; both object and fancy appear together and are united in one
single perception.  At the moment of electing deputies the report is
current in Province[14] that "the best of kings desires perfect
equality, that there are to be no more bishops, nor seigniors, nor
tithes, nor seigniorial dues, no more tithes or distinctions, no more
hunting or fishing rights, .  .  .  that the people are to be wholly
relieved of taxation, and that the first two orders alone are to
provide the expenses of the government." Whereupon forty or fifty
riots take place in one day.  "Several communities refuse to make any
payments to their treasurer outside of royal requisitions." Others do
better: "on pillaging the strong-box of the receiver of the tax on
leather at Brignolles, they shout out Vive le Roi!" "The peasant
constantly asserts his pillage and destruction to be in conformity
with the king's will." A little later, in Auvergne, the peasants who
burn castles are to display "much repugnance" in thus maltreating
"such kind seigniors," but they allege "imperative orders, having been
advised that the king wished it."[15] At Lyons, when the tapsters of
the town and the peasants of the neighborhood trample the customs
officials underfoot they believe that the king has suspended all
customs dues for three days.[16] The scope of their imagination is
proportionate to their shortsightedness.  "Bread, no more rents, no
more taxes!" is the sole cry, the cry of want, while exasperated want
plunges ahead like a famished bull.  Down with the monopolist ! -
storehouses are forced open, convoys of grain are stopped, markets are
pillaged, bakers are hung, and the price of bread is fixed so that
none is to be had or is concealed.  Down with the octroi !   -
barriers are demolished, clerks are beaten, money is wanting in the
towns for urgent expenses.  Burn tax registries, account-books,
municipal archives, seigniors' charter-safes, convent parchments,
every detestable document creative of debtors and sufferers ! The
village itself is no longer able to preserve its parish property.  The
rage against any written document, against public officers, against
any man more or less connected with grain, is blind and determined.
The furious animal destroys all, although wounding himself, driving
and roaring against the obstacle that ought to be outflanked.


III.

Destructive impulses.  - The object of blind rage.  - Distrust of
natural leaders.  - Suspicion of them changed into hatred.  -
Disposition of the people in 1789.

  This owing to the absence of leaders and in the absence of
organization, a mob is simply a herd.  Its mistrust of its natural
leaders, of the great, of the wealthy, of persons in office and
clothed with authority, is inveterate and incurable.  Vainly do these
wish it well and do it good; it has no faith in their humanity or
disinterestedness.  It has been too down-trodden; it entertains
prejudices against every measure proceeding from them, even the most
liberal and the most beneficial.  "At the mere mention of the new
assemblies," says a provincial commission in 1787,[17] "we heard a
workman exclaim, 'What, more new extortioners!' " Superiors of every
kind are suspected, and from suspicion to hostility the road is not
long.  In 1788[18] Mercier declares that "insubordination has been
manifest for some years, especially among the trades.  .  .  .  Formerly,
on entering a printing-office the men took off their hats.  Now they
content themselves with staring and leering at you; scarcely have you
crossed threshold when you yourself more lightly spoken of than if you
were one of them." The same attitude is taken by the peasants in the
environment of Paris; Madame Vigée-Lebrun,[19] on going to Romainville
to visit Marshal de Ségur, remarks: "Not only do they not remove their
hats but they regard us insolently; some of them even threatened us
with clubs." In March and April following this, her guests arrive at
her concert in consternation.  "In the morning, at the promenade of
Longchamps, the populace, assembled at the barrier of l'Etoile,
insulted the people passing by in carriages in the grossest manner;
some of the wretches on the footsteps exclaiming: 'Next year you shall
be behind the carriage and we inside.' " At the close of the year
1788, the stream becomes a torrent and the torrent a cataract.  An
intendant[20] writes that, in his province, the government must
decide, and in the popular sense, to separate from privileged classes,
abandon old forms and give the Third-Estate a double vote.  The clergy
and the nobles are detested, and their supremacy is a yoke.  "Last
July," he says, "the old States-General would have been received with
pleasure and there would have been few obstacles to its formation.
During the past five months minds have become enlightened; respective
interests have been discussed, and leagues formed.  You have been kept
in ignorance of the fermentation which is at its height among all
classes of the Third-Estate, and a spark will kindle the
conflagration.  If the king's decision should be favorable to the first
two orders a general insurrection will occur throughout the provinces,
600,000 men in arms and the horrors of the Jacquerie." The word is
spoken and the reality is coming.  An insurrectionary multitude
rejecting its natural leaders must elect or submit to others.  It is
like an army which, entering on a campaign, finding itself without
officers; the vacancies are for the boldest, most violent, those most
oppressed by the previous rule, and who, leading the advance, shouting
"forward" and thus form the leading groups.  In 1789, the bands are
ready; for, below the suffering people there is yet another people
which suffers yet more, whose insurrection is permanent, and which,
repressed, persecuted, and obscure, only awaits an opportunity to come
out of its hiding-place and openly give their passions free vent.



IV.

Insurrectionary leaders and recruits.  - Poachers.  - Smugglers and
dealers in contraband salt.  - Bandits.  - Beggars and vagabonds.  -
Advent of brigands.  - The people of Paris.

  Vagrants, recalcitrants of all kinds, fugitives of the law or the
police, beggars, cripples, foul, filthy, haggard and savage, they are
bred by the social injustice of the system, and around every one of
the social wounds these swarm like vermin.  -  Four hundred
captaincies protects vast quantities of game feeding on the crops
under the eyes of owners of the land, transforming these into
thousands of poachers, the more dangerous since they are armed, and
defy the most terrible laws.  Already in 1752[21] are seen around Paris
"gatherings of fifty or sixty, all fully armed and acting as if on
regular foraging campaigns, with the infantry at the center and the
cavalry on the wings.  .  .  .  They live in the forests where they have
created a fortified and guarded area and paying exactly for what they
take to live on." In 1777[22], at Sens in Burgundy, the public
attorney, M. Terray, hunting on his own property with two officers,
meets a gang of poachers who fire on the game under their eyes, and
soon afterwards fire on them.  Terray is wounded and one of the
officers has his coat pierced; guards arrive, but the poachers stand
firm and repel them; dragoons are sent for and the poachers kill of
these, along with three horses, and are attacked with sabers; four of
them are brought to the ground and seven are captured.-Reports of the
States-General show that every year, in each extensive forest, murders
occur, sometimes at the hands of a poacher, and again, and the most
frequently, by the shot of a gamekeeper.  - It is a continuous warfare
at home; every vast domain thus harbors its rebels, provided with
powder and ball and knowing how to use them.

   Other recruits for rioting are found among smugglers and in
dealers in contraband salt[23].  A tax, as soon as it becomes
exorbitant, invites fraud, and raises up a population of delinquents
against its army of clerks.  The number of such defrauders may be seen
when we consider the number of custom officers: twelve hundred leagues
of interior custom districts are guarded by 50,000 men, of which
23,000 are soldiers in civilian dress[24].  "In the principal provinces
of the salt-tax and in the provinces of the five great tax leasing
administrations (fermes), for four leagues (ten miles) on either side
of the prohibited line," cultivation is abandoned; everybody is either
a customs official or a smuggler[25].  The more excessive the tax the
higher the premium offered to the violators of the law; at every place
on the boundaries of Brittany with Normandy, Maine and Anjou, four
pence per pound added to the salt-tax multiplies beyond any conception
the already enormous number of contraband dealers.  "Numerous bands of
men,[26] armed with frettes, or long sticks pointed with iron, and
often with pistols or guns, attempt to force a passage.  "A multitude
of women and of children, quite young, cross the brigades boundaries
or, on the other side, troops of dogs are brought there, kept closed
up for a certain time without food or drink, then loaded with salt and
now turned loose so that they, driven by hunger, immediately bring
their cargo back to their masters."-Vagabonds, outlaws, the famished,
sniff this lucrative occupation from afar and run to it like so many
packs of hounds.  "The outskirts of Brittany are filled with a
population of emigrants, mostly outcast from their own districts, who,
after a year's registered stay, may enjoy the privileges of the
Bretons: their occupation is limited to collecting piles of salt to
re-sell to the contraband dealers."  We might imagine them, as in a
flash of lightening, as a long line of restless nomads, nocturnal and
pursued, an entire tribe, male and female, of unsociable prowlers,
familiar with to underhand tricks, toughened by hard weather, ragged,
"nearly all infected by persistent scabies," and I find similar bodies
in the vicinity of Morlaix, Lorient, and other ports on the frontiers
of other provinces and on the frontiers of the kingdom.  From 1783 to
1787, in Quercy, two allied bands of smugglers, sixty and eighty each,
defraud the revenue of 40,000 of tobacco, kill two customs officers,
and, with their guns, defend their stores in the mountains; to
suppress them soldiers are needed, which their military commander will
not furnish.  In 1789,[27] a large troop of smugglers carry on
operations permanently on the frontiers of Maine and Anjou; the
military commander writes that "their chief is an intelligent and
formidable bandit, who already has under him fifty-five men, he will,
due to misery and rebellion soon have a corps;" it would, as we are
unable to take him by force, be best, if some of his men could be
turned and made to hand him over to us.  These are the means resorted
to in regions where brigandage is endemic.  -  Here, indeed, as in
Calabria, the people are on the side of the brigands against the
gendarmes.  The exploits of Mandrin in 1754,[28] may be remembered: his
company of sixty men who bring in contraband goods and ransom only the
clerks, his expedition, lasting nearly a year, across Franche-Comté,
Lyonnais, Bourbonnais, Auvergne and Burgundy, the twenty-seven towns
he enters making no resistance, delivering prisoners and making sale
of his merchandise.  To overcome him a camp had to be formed at Valance
and 2,000 men sent against him; he was taken through treachery, and
still at the present day certain families are proud of their
relationship to him, declaring him a liberator.  - No symptom is more
alarming: on the enemies of the law being preferred by the people to
its defenders, society disintegrates and the worms begin to work.  -
Add to these the veritable brigands, assassins and robbers.  "In
1782,[29] the provost's court of Montargis is engaged on the trial of
Hulin and two hundred of his accomplices who, for ten years, by means
of joint enterprises, have desolated a portion of the kingdom." -
Mercier enumerates in France "an army of more than 10,000 brigands and
vagabonds" against which the police, composed of 3,756 men, is always
on the march.  "Complaints are daily made," says the provincial
assembly of Haute-Guyenne, "that there is no police in the country."
The absentee seignior pays no attention to this matter; his judges and
officials take good care not to operate gratuitously against an
insolvent criminal, the result is that "his estates become the refuge
of all the rascals of the area."[30]  -  Every abuse thus carries with
it a risk, both due to misplaced carelessness as well as excessive
rigor, to relaxed feudalism as well as to harsh monarchy.  All the
institutions appear to work together to breed and or tolerate the
troublemakers, preparing, outside the social defenses, the men of
action who will carry it by storm.

But the total effect of all this is yet more damaging, for, out of
the vast numbers of workers it ruins it forms beggars unwilling to
work, dangerous sluggards going about begging and extorting bread from
peasants who have not too much for themselves.  "The vagabonds about
the country," says Letrosne,[31] "are a terrible pest; they are like
an enemy's force which, distributed over the territory, obtains a
living as it pleases, levying veritable contributions.  .  .  .  They are
constantly roving around the country, examining the approaches to
houses, and informing themselves about their inmates and of their
habits.- Woe to those supposed to have money! .  .  .  What numbers of
highway robberies and what burglaries! What numbers of travelers
assassinated, and houses and doors broken into! What assassinations of
curates, farmers and widows, tormented to discover money and
afterwards killed! Twenty-five years anterior (page 384/284) to the
Revolution it was not infrequent to see fifteen or twenty of these
"invade a farm-house to sleep there, intimidating the farmers and
exacting whatever they pleased." In 1764, the government takes
measures against them which indicate the magnitude of the evil[32].

"Are held to be vagabonds and vagrants, and condemned as such,
those who, for a preceding term of six months, shall have exercised no
trade or profession, and who, having no occupation or means of
subsistence, can procure no persons worthy of confidence to attest and
verify their habits and mode of life.  .  .  .  The intent of His Majesty
is not merely to arrest vagabonds traversing the country but, again,
all mendicants whatsoever who, without occupations, may be regarded as
suspected of vagabondage."

The penalty for able-bodied men is three years in the galleys; in
case of a second conviction, nine years; and for a third, imprisonment
for life.  Under the age of sixteen, they are put in an institution.  "A
mendicant who has made himself liable to arrest by the police," says
the circular, "is not to be released except under the most positive
assurance that he will no longer beg; this course will be followed
only in case of persons worthy of confidence and solvent guaranteeing
the mendicant, and engaging to provide him with employment or to
support him, and they shall indicate the means by which they are to
prevent him from begging." This being furnished, the special
authorization of the intendant must be obtained in addition.  By virtue
of this law, 50,000 beggars are said to have been arrested at once,
and, as the ordinary hospitals and prisons were not large enough to
contain them, jails had to be constructed.  Up to the end of the
ancient régime this measure is carried out with occasional
intermissions: in Languedoc, in 1768, arrests were still made of 433
in six months, and, in 1785, 205 in four months[33].  A little before
this time 300 were confined in the depot of Besançon, 500 in that of
Rennes and 650 in that of Saint Denis.  It cost the king a million a
year to support them, and God knows how they were bedded and fed!
Water, straw, bread, and two ounces of salted grease, the whole at an
expense of five sous a day; and, as the price of provisions for twenty
years back had increased more than a third, the keeper who had them in
charge was obliged to make them fast or ruin himself.   -  With
respect to the mode of filling the depots, the police are Turks in
their treatment of the lower class; they strike into the heap, their
broom bruising as many as they sweep out.  According to the ordinance
of 1778, writes an intendant,[34]

"the police must arrest not only beggars and vagabonds whom they
encounter but, again, those denounced as such or as suspected persons.
The citizen, the most irreproachable in his conduct and the least open
to suspicion of vagabondage, is not sure of not being shut up in the
depot, as his freedom depends on a policeman who is constantly liable
to be deceived by a false denunciation or corrupted by a bribe.  I have
seen in the depot at Rennes several husbands arrested solely through
the denunciation of their wives, and as many women through that of
their husbands; several children by the first wife at the solicitation
of their step-mothers; many female domestics pregnant by the masters
they served, shut up at their instigation, and girls in the same
situation at the instance of their seducers; children denounced by
their fathers, and fathers denounced by their children; all without
the slightest evidence of vagabondage or mendicity.  .  .  .  No decision
of the provost's court exists restoring the incarcerated to their
liberty, notwithstanding the infinite number arrested unjustly."

Suppose that a human intendant, like this one, sets them at
liberty: there they are in the streets, without a penny, beggars
through the action of a law which proscribes mendicity and which adds
to the wretched it prosecutes the wretched it creates, still more
embittered and corrupt in body and in soul.

"It nearly always happens," says the same intendant, "that the
prisoners, arrested twenty-five or thirty leagues from the depot, are
not confined there until three or four months after their arrest, and
sometimes longer.  Meanwhile, they are transferred from brigade to
brigade, in the prisons found along the road, where they remain until
the number increases sufficiently to form a convoy.  Men and women are
confined in the same prison, the result of which is, the females not
pregnant on entering it are always so on their arrival at the depot.
The prisons are generally unhealthy; frequently, the majority of the
prisoners are sick on leaving it;"

and many become rascals on coming in contact with rascals.-Moral
contagion and physical contagion, the ulcer thus increasing through
the remedy, centers of repression becoming centers of corruption.

And yet with all its rigors the law does not attain its ends.

"Our towns," says the parliament of Brittany,[35] "are so filled
with beggars it seems as if the measures taken to suppress mendicity
only increase it."   -   "The principal highways," writes the
intendant, "are infested with dangerous vagabonds and vagrants, actual
beggars, which the police do not arrest, either through negligence or
because their interference is not provoked by special solicitations."

What would be done with them if they were arrested? They are too
many, and there is no place to put them.  And, moreover, how prevent
people who live on alms from demanding alms? The effect, undoubtedly,
is lamentable but inevitable.  Poverty, to a certain extent, is a slow
gangrene in which the morbid parts consume the healthy parts, the man
scarcely able to subsist being eaten up alive by the man who has
nothing to live on.

"The peasant is ruined, perishing, the victim of oppression by the
multitude of the poor that lay waste the country and take refuge in
the towns.  Hence the mobs so prejudicial to public safety, that crowd
of smugglers and vagrants, that large body of men who have become
robbers and assassins, solely because they lack bread.  This gives but
a faint idea of the disorders I have seen with my own eyes[36].  The
poverty of the rural districts, excessive in itself, becomes yet more
so through the disturbances it engenders; we have not to seek
elsewhere for frightful sources of mendicity and for all the
vices."[37]

Of what avail are palliatives or violent proceedings against an
evil which is in the blood, and which belongs to the very constitution
of the social organism? What police force could effect anything in a
parish in which one-quarter or one-third of its inhabitants have
nothing to eat but that which they beg from door to door? At
Argentré,[38] in Brittany, "a town without trade or industry, out of
2,300 inhabitants, more than one-half are anything else but well-off,
and over 500 are reduced to beggary." At Dainville, in Artois, "out of
130 houses sixty are on the poor-list."[39]  In Normandy, according to
statements made by the curates, "of 900 parishioners in Saint-Malo,
three-quarters can barely live and the rest are in poverty." "Of 1,500
inhabitants in Saint-Patrice, 400 live on alms." Of 500 inhabitants in
Saint-Laurent three-quarters live on alms." At Marboef, says a report,
"of 500 persons inhabiting our parish, 100 are reduced to mendicity,
and besides these, thirty or forty a day come to us from neighboring
parishes."[40]  At Bolbone in Languedoc[41] daily at the convent gate
is "general almsgiving to 300 or 400 poor people, independent of that
for the aged and the sick, which is more numerously attended." At
Lyons, in 1787, "30,000 workmen depend on public charity for
subsistence;" at Rennes, in 1788, after an inundation, "two-thirds of
the inhabitants are in a state of destitution;"[42] at Paris, out of
650,000 inhabitants, the census of 1791 counts 118,784 as
indigent.[43] - Let frost or hail come, as in 1788, let a crop fail,
let bread cost four sous a pound, and let a workman in the charity-
workshops earn only twelve sous a day,[44]  can one imagine that
people will resign themselves to death by starvation? Around Rouen,
during the winter of 1788, the forests are pillaged in open day, the
woods at Baguères are wholly cut away, the fallen trees are publicly
sold by the marauders[45].  Both the famished and the marauders go
together, necessity making itself the accomplice of crime.  From
province to province we can follow up their tracks: four months later,
in the vicinity of Etampes, fifteen brigands break into four
farmhouses during the night, while the farmers, threatened by
incendiaries, are obliged to give, one three hundred francs, another
five hundred, all the money, probably, they have in their coffers[46].
"Robbers, convicts, the worthless of every species," are to form the
advance guard of insurrections and lead the peasantry to the extreme
of violence[47].  After the sack of the Reveillon house in Paris it is
remarked that "of the forty ringleaders arrested, there was scarcely
one who was not an old offender, and either flogged or branded."[48]
In every revolution the dregs of society come to the surface.  Never
had these been visible before; like badgers in the woods, or rats in
the sewers, they had remained in their burrows or in their holes.  They
issue from these in swarms, and suddenly, in Paris, what figures![49]
"Never had any like them been seen in daylight.  .  .  Where do they come
from? Who has brought them out of their obscure hiding places? .  .  .
strangers from everywhere, armed with clubs, ragged, .  .  .  some almost
naked, others oddly dressed" in incongruous patches and "frightful to
look at," constitute the riotous chiefs or their subordinates, at six
francs per head, behind which the people are to march.

"At Paris," says Mercier,[50] "the people are weak, pallid,
diminutive, stunted," maltreated, "and, apparently, a class apart from
other classes in the country.  The rich and the great who possess
equipages, enjoy the privilege of crushing them or of mutilating them
in the streets.  .  .  There is no convenience for pedestrians, no side-
walks.  Hundred victims die annually under the carriage wheels." "I
saw," says Arthur Young, "a poor child run over and probably killed,
and have been myself several times been covered from head to toe with
the water from the gutter.  Should young (English) noblemen drive along
London streets without sidewalks, in the same manner as their equals
in Paris, they would speedily and justly get very well thrashed and
rolled in the gutter."

Mercier grows uneasy in the face of the immense populace:

 "In Paris there are, probably, 200,000 persons with no property
intrinsically worth fifty crowns, and yet the city subsists!"

Order, consequently, is maintained only through fear and by force,
owing to the soldiery of the watch who are called tristes-à-patte by
the crowd.  "This nick name enrages this species of militia, who then
deal heavier blows around them, wounding indiscriminately all they
encounter.  The low class is always ready to make war on them because
it has never been fairly treated by them." In fact, "a squad of the
guard often scatters, with no trouble, crowds of five or six hundred
men, at first greatly excited, but melting away in the twinkling of an
eye, after the soldiery have distributed a few blows and handcuffed
two or three of the ringleaders."  -   Nevertheless, "were the people
of Paris abandoned to their true inclinations, did they not feel the
horse and foot guards behind them, the commissary and policeman, there
would be no limits to their disorder.  The populace, delivered from its
customary restraint, would give itself up to violence of so cruel a
stamp as not to know when to stop.  .  .  As long as white bread
lasts,[51] the commotion will not prove general; the flour market[52]
must interest itself in the matter, if the women are to remain
tranquil.  .  .  Should white bread be wanting for two market days in
succession, the uprising would be universal, and it is impossible to
foresee the lengths this multitude at bay will go to in order to
escape famine, they and their children." -In 1789 white bread proves
to be wanting throughout France.

___________________________________________________________________

Notes:

[1] Théron de Montaugé, 102, 113.  In the Toulousain ten parishes
out of fifty have schools.  - In Gascony, says the ass.  prov.  of Auch
(p.  24), "most of the rural districts are without schoolmasters or
parsonages." - In 1778, the post between Paris and Toulouse runs only
three times a week; that of Toulouse by way of Alby, Rodez, etc.,
twice a week; for Beaumont, Saint-Girons, etc., once a week.  "In the
country," says Théron de Montaugé, "one may be said to live in
solitude and exile." In 1789 the Paris post reaches Besançon three
times a week.  (Arthur Young, I.  257).

[2] One of the Marquis de Mirabeau's expressions.

[3] Archives nationales, G.  300, letter of an excise director at
Coulommiers, Aug.  13, 1781.

[4] D'Argenson, VI.  425 (June 16, 1751).

[5] De Montlosier, I.  102, 146.

[6] Théron de Montaugé, 102.

[7] Monsieur Nicolas, I.  448.

[8] "Tableaux de la Révolution," by Schmidt, II.  7 (report by the
agent Perriere who lived in Auvergne.)

[9] Gouverneur Morris, II.  69, April 29, 1789.

[10] Mercier, "Tableau de Paris," XII.  83.

[11] De Vaublanc, 209.

[12] Mandrin, (Louis) (Saint Étienne-de- Saint-Geoirs, Isère, 1724
- Valence, 1755).  French smuggler who, after 1750, was active over an
enormous territory with the support of the population; hunted down by
the army, caught, condemned to death to be broken alive on the wheel.
(SR.)

[13] Arthur Young, I.  283 (Aug.  13, 1789); I.  289 (Aug.  19, 1789).

[14] Archives nationales, H, 274.  Letters respectively of M. de
Caraman (March 18 and April 12, 1789); M. d'Eymar de Montmegran (April
2); M. de la Tour (March 30).  "The sovereign's greatest benefit is
interpreted in the strangest manner by an ignorant populace."

[15] Doniol, "Hist.  Des classes rurales," 495.  (Letter of Aug.  3,
1789, to M. de Clermont-Tonnerre).

[16] Archives nationales, H.  1453.  (Letter of Aug.  3, 1789, to M.
de Clermont-Tonnere).

[17] Procès-verbaux de l'ass.  Prov.  D'Orléanais," p.  296."Distrusts
still prevails throughout the rural districts.  .  .  Your first orders
for departmental assemblies only awakened suspicion in certain
quarters."

[18] "Tableau de Paris," XII.  186.

[19] Mme.  Vigée-Lebrun, I.  158, (1788); I.  183 (1789).

[20] Archives nationals, H.  723.  (Letter of M. de Caumartin,
intendant at Besançon, Dec.  5, 1788).

[21] D'Argenson, March 13, 1752.

[22] "Corresp.," of Métra, V, 179 (November 22, 1777).

[23] Beugnot, I.  142.  "No inhabitant of the barony of Choiseul
mingled with any of the bands composed of the patriots of Montigny,
smugglers and outcasts of the neighborhood." - See, on the poachers of
the day, "Les deux amis de Bourbonne," by Diderot.

[24] De Calonne, "Mémoires presentés à l'ass.  des notables," No.  8.
-  Necker, "De l'Administration des Finances," I.  195.

[25] Letrosne, "De l'Administration des Finances," 59.

[26] Archives nationales, H.  426.  (Mémoires of the farmers-general,
Jan.  13, 1781, Sept.  15, 1782).  H, 614.  (Letter of M. de Coetlosquet,
April 25, 1777).  H, 1431.  Report by the farmers-general, March 9,
1787.

[27] Archives nationales, H, 1453.  Letter of the Baron de Bezenval,
June 19, 1789.

[28] "Mandrin," by Paul Simian, passim.  -  "Histoire de Beaume,"
by Rossignol, p.  453.  - "Mandrin," by Ch.  Jarrin (1875).  Major Fisher,
who attacks and disperses the gang, writes that the affair is urgent
since, "higher to the North near Forez, one can find two or three
hundred vagrants who only wait for a chance to unite with them."
(p.47.)

[29] Mercier, XI.  116.

[30] See above, book I.  p.  55.

[31] Letrosne, ibid.  (1779), p.  539.

[32] Archives nationales, F16, 965, and H, 892.  (Ordinance of
August 4 1764; a circular of instructions of July 20, 1767; a letter
of a police lieutenant of Toulouse, September 21, 1787).

[33] Archives nationales, H, 724; H, 554; F4 2397; F16 965.  -
Letters of the jailers of Carcassonne (June 22, 1789); of Béziers
(July 19, 1786); of Nimes (July 1, 1786); of the intendant, M. d'Aine
(March 19, 1786).

[34] Archives nationales, H, 554.  (Letter of M. de Bertrand,
intendant of Rennes, August 7, 1785).

[35] Archives nationales, H, 426.  (Remonstrances, Feb.  1783).  - H,
554.  (Letter of M. de Bertrand, Aug.  17, 1785).

[36] Archives nationales, H, 614 (Mémoire by René de Hauteville,
parliamentary advocate, Saint-Brieuc, Dec.  25, 1776.)

[37] "Process-verbaux de l'ass.  Prov.  de Soissonnais" (1787) p.
457.

[38] Archives nationales, H, 616 (A letter of M. De Boves,
intendant of Rennes, April 23, 1774).

[39] Périn, "La Jeunesse de Robespierre," 301.  (Doléances des
parroisses rurales en 1789).

[40] Hippeau, "Le Gouvern.  de Normandie," VII.  147-177 (1789).  -
Boivin-Champeaux, "Notice hist.  sur la Révolution dans le département
de l'Eure," p.  83 (1789).

[41] Théron de Montaugé, p.  87.  (Letter of the prior of the
convent, March, 1789).

[42] "Procès-verbaux de l'Ass.  prov.  de Lyonnais," p.57.  -
Archives nationales, F4, 2073.  Memorandum of Jan.  24, 1788.
"Charitable assistance is very limited, the provincial authorities
providing no resources for such accidents."

[43] Levasseur, "La France industrielle," 119.  -  In 1862, the
population being almost triple (1 696 000) there are but 90 000
paupers.

[44] Albert Babeau, "Hist.  de Troyes," I.  91.  (Letter of the mayor
Huez, July 30, 1788).

[45] Floquet, VII, 506.

[46] Archives nationales, H, 1453.  (Letter of M. de Sainte-Suzanne,
April 29, 1789).

[47] Arthur Young, I.  256.

[48] "Correspond.  secrèt inédite," from 1777 to 1792, published by
M. de Lescure, II.  351 (May 8, 1789).  Cf.  C.  Desmoulins, "La
Lanterne," of 100 rioters arrested at Lyons 96 were branded.

[49] De Bezenval, II.  344, 350.  - Dussault, "La Prise de la
Bastille," 352.  - Marmontel, II, ch.  XIV, 249.  --Mme.  Vigée-Lebrun, I.
177, 188.

[50] Mercier, I.  32; VI.  15; X.  179; XI.  59; XII.  83.  -  Arthur
Young, I.  122.

[51] In the original, pain de Gonesse,  -  bread, made in a village
of this name near Paris, and renowned for its whiteness.  -  TR.

[52] "Dialogues sur le commerce des blés," by Galiani (1770).  "If
the strong of the markets are content, no misfortune will happen to
the administration.  The great conspire and rebel; the bourgeois
murmurs and lives a celibate; peasants and artisans despair and go
away; porters get up riots."






CHAPTER IV.  The Armed Forces.

I.

Military force declines.  -  How the army is recruited.  -  How the
soldier is treated.

  Against universal sedition where is force? - The measures and
dispositions which govern the 150,000 men who maintain order are the
same as those ruling the 26 millions people subject to it.  We find
here the same abuses, disaffection, and other causes for the
dissolution of the nation which, in their turn, will dissolve the
army.

Of the 90 millions of pay[1] which the army annually costs the
treasury, 46 millions are for officers and only 44 millions for
soldiers, and we are already aware that a new ordinance reserves ranks
of all kinds for verified nobles.  In no direction is this inequality,
against which public opinion rebels so vigorously, more apparent.  On
the one hand, authority, honors, money, leisure, good-living, social
enjoyments, and plays in private, for the minority.  On the other hand,
for the majority, subjection, dejection, fatigue, a forced or betrayed
enlistment, no hope of promotion, pay at six sous a day,[2] a narrow
cot for two, bread fit for dogs, and, for several years, kicks like
those bestowed on a dog.[3] On the one hand, a nobility of high
estate, and, on the other, the lowest of the populace.  One might say
that this was specially designed for contrast and to intensify
irritation.  "The insignificant pay of the soldier," says an economist,
"the way in which he is dressed, lodged and fed, his utter dependence,
would render it cruelty to take any other than a man of the lower
class."[4] Indeed, he is sought for only in the lowest layers of
society.  Not only are nobles and the bourgeoisie exempt from
conscription, but again the employees of the administration, of the
fermes and of public works, "all gamekeepers and forest-rangers, the
hired domestics and valets of ecclesiastics, of communities, of
religious establishments, of the gentry and of nobles,"[5] and even of
the bourgeoisie living in grand style, and still better, the sons of
cultivators in easy circumstances, and, in general, all possessing
influence or any species of protector.  There remains, accordingly, for
the militia none but the poorest class, and they do not willingly
enter it.  On the contrary, the service is hateful to them; they
conceal themselves in the forests where they have to be pursued by
armed men: in a certain canton which, three years later, furnishes in
one day from fifty to one hundred volunteers, the young men cut off
their thumbs to escape the draft.[6] To this scum of society is added
the sweepings of the depots and of the jails.  Among the vagabonds that
fill these, after winnowing out those able to make their families
known or to obtain sponsors, "there are none left," says an intendant,
"but those who are entirely unknown or dangerous, out of which those
regarded as the least vicious are selected and efforts are made to
place these in the army."[7]  -   The last of its affluents is the
half-forced, half-voluntary enlistment by which the ranks are for the
most part filled, the human waste of large towns, like adventurers,
discharged apprentices, young reprobates turned out of doors, and
people without homes or steady occupation.  The recruiting agent who is
paid so much a head for his recruits and so much an inch on their
stature above five feet, "holds his court in a tavern, treating
everyone" promoting his merchandise:

"Come, boys, soup, fish, meat and salad is what you get to eat in
the regiment;" nothing else, "I don't deceive you  -  pie and Arbois
wine are the extras."[8]

He pours the wine, pays the bill and, if need be, yields his
mistress.  "After a few days debauchery, the young libertine, with no
money to pay his debts, is obliged to sell himself, while the laborer,
transformed into soldier, begins to drill under the lash."  -  Strange
recruits these, for the protection of society, all selected from the
class which will attack it, down-trodden peasants, imprisoned
vagabonds, social outcasts, poor fellows in debt, disheartened,
excited and easily tempted, who, according to circumstances, become at
one time rioters, and at another soldiers.  - Which lot is preferable?
The bread the soldier eats is not more abundant than that of the
prisoner, while poorer in quality; for the bran is taken out of the
bread which the locked-up vagabond eats, and left in the bread which
is eaten by the soldier who locks him up[9].  In this state of things
the soldier ought not to mediate on his lot, and yet this is just what
his officers incite him to do.  They also have become politicians and
fault-finders.  Some years before the Revolution[10] "disputes
occurred" in the army, "discussions and complaints, and, the new ideas
fermenting in their heads, a correspondence was established between
two regiments.  Written information was obtained from Paris, authorized
by the Minister of War, which cost, I believe, twelve louis per annum.
It soon took a philosophic turn, embracing dissertations, criticisms
of the ministry, and of the government, desirable changes and,
therefore, the more diffused." Sergeants like Hoche, and fencing-
masters like Augereau, certainly often read this news, carelessly left
lying on the tables, and commented on it during the evening in their
soldier quarters.  Discontent is of ancient date, and already, at the
end of the late reign, grievous words are heard.  At a banquet given by
a prince of the blood,[11] with a table set for a hundred guests under
an immense tent and served by grenadiers, the odor these diffused
upset the prince's delicate nose.  "These worthy fellows," said he, a
little too loud, "smell strong of the stocking." One of the grenadiers
bluntly responded, "Because we haven't got any," which "was followed
by profound silence." During the ensuring years irritation smolders
and augments; the soldiers of Rochambeau have fought side by side with
the free militia of America, and they keep this in mind.  In 1788,[12]
Marshal de Vaux, previous to the insurrection in Dauphiny, writes to
minister that "it is impossible to rely on the troops," while four
months after the opening of the States-General 16,000 deserters
roaming around Paris leads the revolts instead of suppressing
them.[13]




II.

The social organization is dissolved.  -  No central rallying
point.  -  Inertia of the provinces.  -  Ascendancy of Paris.

  Once this barrier has disappeared, no other embankment remains
and the inundation spreads all over France like over an immense plain.
With other nations in like circumstances, some obstacles have been
encountered; elevations have existed, centers of refuge, old
constructions in which, in the universal fright, a portion of the
population could find shelter.  Here, the first crisis sweeps away all
that remains, each individual of the twenty-six scattered millions
standing alone by himself.  The administrations of Richelieu and Louis
XIV.  had been a long time at work insensibly destroying the natural
groupings which, when suddenly dissolved, unite and form over again of
their own accord.  Except in Vendée, I find no place, nor any class, in
which a good many men, having confidence in a few men, are able, in
the hour of danger, to rally around these and form a compact body.
Neither provincial nor municipal patriotism any longer exists.  The
inferior clergy are hostile to the prelates, the gentry of the
province to the nobility of the court, the vassal to the seignior, the
peasant to the townsman, the urban population to the municipal
oligarchy, corporation to corporation, parish to parish, neighbor to
neighbor.  All are separated by their privileges and their jealousies,
by the consciousness of having been imposed on, or frustrated, for the
advantage of another.  The journeyman tailor is embittered against his
foreman for preventing him from doing a day's work in private houses,
hairdressers against their employers for the like reason, the pastry-
cook against the baker who prevents him from baking the pies of
housekeepers, the village spinner against the town spinners who wish
to break him up, the rural wine-growers against the bourgeois who, in
the circle of seven leagues, strives to have their vines pulled
up,[14] the village against the neighboring village whose reduction of
taxation has ruined it, the overtaxed peasant against the under taxed
peasant, one-half of a parish against its collectors, who, to its
detriment, have favored the other half.

"The nation," says Turgot, mournfully,[15] "is a society composed
of different orders badly united and of a people whose members have
few mutual liens, nobody, consequently, caring for any interest but
his own.  Nowhere is there any sign of an interest in common.  Towns and
villages maintain no more relation with each other than the districts
to which they are attached; they are even unable to agree together
with a view to carry out public improvements of great importance to
them."

The central power for a hundred and fifty years rules through its
division of power.  Men have been kept separate, prevented from acting
in concert, the work being so successful that they no longer
understand each other, each class ignoring the other class, each
forming of the other a chimerical picture, each bestowing on the other
the hues of its own imagination, one composing an idyll, the other
framing a melodrama, one imagining peasants as sentimental swains, the
other convinced that the nobles are horrible tyrants.  -   Through
this mutual misconception and this secular isolation, the French lose
the habit, the art and the faculty for acting in an entire body.  They
are no longer capable of spontaneous agreement and collective action.
No one, in the moment of danger, dares rely on his neighbors or on his
equals.  No one knows where to turn to obtain a guide.  "A man willing
to be responsible for the smallest district cannot be found; and, more
than this, one man able to answer for another man[16]." Utter and
irremediable disorder is at hand.  The Utopia of the theorists has been
accomplished, the savage condition has recommenced.  Individuals now
stand in by themselves; everyone reverting back to his original
feebleness, while his possessions and his life are at the mercy of the
first band that comes along.  He has nothing within him to control him
but the sheep-like habit of being led, of awaiting an impulsion, of
turning towards the accustomed center, towards Paris, from which his
orders have always arrived.  Arthur Young[17] is struck with this
mechanical movement.  Political ignorance and docility are everywhere
complete.  He, a foreigner, conveys the news of Alsace into Burgundy:
the insurrection there had been terrible, the populace having sacked
the city-hall at Strasbourg, of which not a word was known at Dijon;
"yet it is nine days since it happened; had it been nineteen I
question if they would more than have received the intelligence."
There are no newspapers in the cafés; no local centers of information,
of resolution, of action.  The province submits to events at the
capital; "people dare not move; they dare not even form an opinion
before Paris speaks."  - This is what Monarchical centralization leads
to.  It has deprived the groups of their cohesion and the individual of
his motivational drive.  Only human dust remains, and this, whirling
about and gathered together in massive force, is blindly driven along
by the wind.[18]



III.

Direction of the current.  -  The people led by lawyers.  -
Theories and piques the sole surviving forces.  -  Suicide of the
Ancient regime.

We are all well aware from which side the gale comes, and, to
assure ourselves, we have merely to see how the reports of the Third-
Estate are made up.  The peasant is led by the man of the law, the
petty attorney of the rural districts, the envious advocate and
theorist.  This one insists, in the report, on a statement being made
in writing and at length of his local and personal grievances, his
protest against taxes and deductions, his request to have his dog free
of the clog, and his desire to own a gun to use against the
wolves[19].  Another one, who suggests and directs, envelopes all this
in the language of the Rights of Man and that of the circular of
Sieyès.

 "For two months," writes a commandant in the South,[20] "inferior
judges and lawyers, with which both town and country swarm, with a
view to their election to the States-General, have been racing after
the members of the Third-Estate, under the pretext of standing by them
and of giving them information.  .  .  They have striven to make them
believe that, in the States-General, they alone would be masters and
regulate all the affairs of the kingdom; that the Third-Estate, in
selecting its deputies among men of the robe, would secure the might
and the right to take the lead, to abolish nobility and to cancel all
its rights and privileges; that nobility would no longer be
hereditary; that all citizens, in deserving it, would be entitled to
claim it; that, if the people elected them, they would have accorded
to the Third-Estate whatever it desired, because the curates,
belonging to the Third-Estate, having agreed to separate from the
higher clergy and unite with them, the nobles and the clergy, united
together, would have but one vote against two of the Third-Estate.  .  .
.  If the third - Estate had chosen sensible townspeople or merchants
they would have combined without difficulty with the other two orders.
But the assemblies of the bailiwicks and other districts were stuffed
with men of the robe who had absorbed all opinions and striven to take
precedence of the others, each, in his own behalf, intriguing and
conspiring to be appointed a deputy."

  "In Touraine," writes the intendant,[21] "most of the votes have
been bespoken or begged for.  Trusty agents, at the moment of voting,
placed filled-in ballots in the hands of the voters, and put in their
way, on reaching the taverns, every document and suggestion calculated
to excite their imaginations and determine their choice for the gentry
of the bar."

 "In the sénéchausée of Lectoure, a number of parishes have not
been designated or notified to send their reports or deputies to the
district assembly.  In those which were notified the lawyers, attorneys
and notaries of the small neighboring towns have made up the list of
grievances themselves without summoning the community.  .  .  Exact
copies of this single rough draft were made and sold at a high price
to the councils of each country parish".   -

This is an alarming symptom, one marking out in advance the road
the Revolution is to take: The man of the people is indoctrinated by
the advocate, the pikeman allowing himself to be led by the
spokesman.[22]

The effect of their combination is apparent the first year.  In
Franche-Comté[23] after consultation with a person named Rouget, the
peasants of the Marquis de Chaila "determine to make no further
payments to him, and to divide amongst themselves the product of the
wood-cuttings." In his paper "the lawyer states that all the
communities of the province have decided to do the same thing.  .  .  His
consultation is diffused to such an extent around the country that
many of the communities are satisfied that they owe nothing more to
the king nor to the seigniors.  M. de Marnésia, deputy to the
(National) Assembly, has arrived (here) to pass a few days at home on
account of his health.  He has been treated in the rudest and most
scandalous manner; it was even proposed to conduct him back to Paris
under guard.  After his departure his chateau was attacked, the doors
burst open and the walls of his garden pulled down.  (And yet) no
gentleman has done more for the people on his domain the M. le Marquis
de Marnésia.  .  .  Excesses of every kind are on the increase; I have
constant complaints of the abuse which the national militia make of
their arms, and which I cannot remedy." According to an utterance in
the National Assembly the police imagines that it is to be disbanded
and has therefore no desire to make enemies for itself.  "The baillages
are as timid as the police-forces; I send them business constantly,
but no culprit is punished."   --  "No nation enjoys liberty so
indefinite and so disastrous to honest people; it is absolutely
against the rights of man to see oneself constantly liable to have his
throat cut by the scoundrels who daily confound liberty with license."
-  In other words, the passions utilize the theory to justify
themselves, and the theory appeal to passion to be carried out.  For
example, near Liancourt, the Duc de Larochefoucauld possessed an
uncultivated area of ground; "at the commencement of the
revolution,[24] the poor of the town declare that, as they form a part
of the nation, untilled lands being national property, this belongs to
them," and "with no other formality" they take possession of it,
divide it up, plant hedges and clear it off.  "This, says Arthur Young,
shows the general disposition.  .  .  .  Pushed a little farther the
consequences would not be slight for properties in this kingdom."
Already, in the preceding year, near Rouen, the marauders, who cut
down and sell the forests, declare, that "the people have the right to
take whatever they require for their necessities." They have had the
doctrine preached to them that they are sovereign, and they act as
sovereigns.  The condition of their intellects being given, nothing is
more natural than their conduct.  Several millions of savages are thus
let loose by a few thousand windbags, the politics of the café finding
an interpreter and ministrants in the mob of the streets.  On the one
hand brute force is at the service of the radical dogma.  On the other
hand radical dogma is at the service of brute force.  And here, in
disintegrated France, these are the only two valid powers remaining
erect on the debris of the others.

______________________________________________________________________

Notes:

[1] Necker, "De l'Administration des Finances," II.  422, 435.

[2] The wages have in 1789 been estimated to be 7 sous 4 deniers of
which 2 sous and 6 deniers would have to be paid for the bread.
(Mercure de France, May 7, 1791.)

[3] Aubertin, 345.  Letter to the Comte de St.  Germain (during the
Seven Years War).  "The soldier's hardships make one's heart bleed; he
passes his days in a state of abject misery, despised and living like
a chained dog to be used for combat."

[4] De Tocqueville, 190, 191.

[5] Archives nationales, H, 1591.

[6] De Rochambeau, "Mémoires," I.  427.  -  D'Argenson, December 24,
1752.  "30,000 men have been punished for desertion since the peace of
1748; this extensive desertion is attributed to the new drill which
fatigues and disheartens the soldier, and especially the veterans."  -
Voltaire, "Dict.  Phil.," article "Punishments." "I was amazed one day
on seeing the list of deserters, for eight years amounting to 60,000."

[7] Archives nationales, H, 554.  (Letter of M. de Bertrand,
intendant of Rennes, August 17, 1785).

[8] Mercier, XI, 121.

[9] Now we know better.  The most healthy bread is the one in which
some bran is left, such bran is not only good for the digestion but
contains vitamins and minerals as well.  (SR).

[10] De Vaublanc, 149.

[11] De Ségur, I, 20 (1767).

[12] Augeard, "Mémoires," 165.

[13] Horace Walpole, September 5, 1789.

[14] Laboulaye, "De l'Administration française sous Louis XVI."
(Revue des Cours littéraires, IV, 743).  -  Albert Babeau, I, 111.
(Doléances et veux des corporations de Troyes).

[15] De Tocqueville, 158.

[16] Ibid.  304.  (The words of Burke.)

[17] Travels in France, I.  240, 263.

[18] What an impression this view must have made on Lenin who
sought, between 1906 and 1909 in Paris, the means and ways with which
to re-create the French revolution in Russia.  (SR.)

[19] Beugnot, I.  115, 116.

[20] Archives nationales, procès-verbaux and cahiers of the States-
General, vol.  XIII, p.  405.  (Letter of the Marquis de Fodoas,
commandant of Armagnac, to M. Necker, may 29, 1789.)

[21] Ibid.  Vol.  CL, p.  174.  ( Letter from the intendant of Tours of
March 25, 1789.)

[22] "Lenin deviated from Marx not in preaching the necessity for
violent proletarian revolution, but by advocating the creation of an
elite party of professional revolutionaries to hasten this end, and by
arguing for the dictatorship of this party rather than the working
class as a whole." The Guinness Encyclopedia page 269.  (SR.)

[23] Archives nationales, H, 784.  (Letters of M. de Langeron,
military commandant at Besançon, October 16 and 18, 1789).  The
consultation is annexed.

[24] Arthur Young, I, 344.






CHAPTER V.  SUMMARY.

I.  Suicide of the Ancient Regime.

  These two forces, radical dogma and brute force, are the
successors and executors of the Ancient regime, and, on contemplating
the way in which this regime engendered, brought forth, nourished,
installed and stimulated them we cannot avoid considering its history
as one long suicide, like that of a man who, having mounted to the top
of an immense ladder, cuts away from under his feet the support which
has kept him up.  -   In a case of this kind good intentions are not
sufficient; to be liberal and even generous, to enter upon a few semi-
reforms, is of no avail.  On the contrary, through both their qualities
and defects, through both their virtues and their vices, the
privileged wrought their own destruction, their merits contributing to
their ruin as well as their faults.  -  Founders of society, formerly
entitled to their advantages through their services, they have
preserved their rank without fulfilling their duties; their position
in the local as in the central government is a sinecure, and their
privileges have become abuses.  At their head, a king, creating France
by devoting himself to her as if his own property, ended by
sacrificing her as if his own property; the public purse is his
private purse, while passions, vanities, personal weaknesses,
luxurious habits, family solicitudes, the intrigues of a mistress and
the caprices of a wife, govern a state of twenty-six millions of men
with an arbitrariness, a heedlessness, a prodigality, a lack of skill,
an absence of consistency that would scarcely be overlooked in the
management of a private domain.  -  The king and the privileged excel
in one direction, in manners, in good taste, in fashion, in the talent
for representation and in entertaining and receiving, in the gift of
graceful conversation, in finesse and in gaiety, in the art of
converting life into a brilliant and ingenious festivity, regarding
the world as a drawing room of refined idlers in which it suffices to
be amiable and witty, whilst, actually, it is an arena where one must
be strong for combats, and a laboratory in which one must work in
order to be useful.  -   Through the habit, perfection and sway of
polished intercourse they stamped on the French intellect a classic
form, which, combined with recent scientific acquisitions, produced
the philosophy of the eighteenth century, the disrepute of tradition,
the ambition of recasting all human institutions according to the sole
dictates of Reason, the appliance of mathematical methods to politics
and morals, the catechism of the Rights of Man, and other dogmas of
anarchical and despotic character in the CONTRAT SOCIAL.  -   Once
this chimera is born they welcome it as a drawing room fancy; they use
the little monster as a plaything, as yet innocent and decked with
ribbons like a pastoral lambkin; they never dream of its becoming a
raging, formidable brute; they nourish it, and caress it, and then,
opening their doors, they let it descend into the streets.  -   Here
among the middle class which the government has rendered ill-disposed
by compromising its fortunes, which the privileged have offended by
restricting its ambition, which is wounded by inequality through
injured self-esteem, the revolutionary theory gains rapid accessions,
a sudden asperity, and, in a few years, it finds itself undisputed
master of public opinion.  -  At this moment and at its summons,
another colossal monster rises up, a monster with millions of heads, a
blind, startled animal, an entire people pressed down, exasperated and
suddenly loosened against the government whose exactions have
despoiled it, against the privileged whose rights have reduced it to
starvation, without, in these rural districts abandoned by their
natural protectors, encountering any surviving authority; without, in
these provinces subject to the yoke of universal centralization,
encountering a single independent group and without the possibility of
forming, in this society broken up by despotism, any centers of
enterprise and resistance; without finding, in this upper class
disarmed by its very humanity, a policy devoid of illusion and capable
of action.  Without which all these good intentions and fine intellects
shall be unable to protect themselves against the two enemies of all
liberty and of all order, against the contagion of the democratic
nightmare which disturbs the ablest heads and against the irruptions
of the popular brutality which perverts the best of laws.  At the
moment of opening the States-General the course of ideas and events is
not only fixed but, again, apparent.  Beforehand and unconsciously,
each generation bears (Page 400/296)within itself its past and its
future; and to this one, long before the end, one might have been able
to foretell its fate, and, if both details as well as the entire
action could have been foreseen, one would readily have accepted the
following fiction made up by a converted Laharpe[1] when, at the end
of the Directory, he arranged his souvenirs:

II.

"It seems to me," he says, "as if it were but yesterday, and yet it
is at the beginning of the year 1788.  We were dining with one of our
fellow members of the Academy, a grand seignior and a man of
intelligence.  The company was numerous and of every profession,
courtiers, advocates, men of letters and academicians, all had feasted
luxuriously according to custom.  At the dessert the wines of Malvoisie
and of Constance contributed to the social gaiety a sort of freedom
not always kept within decorous limits.  At that time society had
reached the point at which everything may be expressed that excites
laughter.  Champfort had read to us his impious and libertine stories,
and great ladies had listened to these without recourse to their fans.
Hence a deluge of witticisms against religion, one quoting a tirade
from 'La Pucelle,' another bringing forward certain philosophical
stanzas by Diderot.  .  .  .  and with unbounded applause.  .  .  .  The
conversation becomes more serious; admiration is expressed at the
revolution accomplished by Voltaire, and all agree in its being the
first title to his fame.  'He gave the tone to his century, finding
readers in the antechambers as well as in the drawing-room.' One of
the guests narrates, bursting with laughter, what a hairdresser said
to him while powdering his hair: 'You see, sir, although I am a
miserable scrub, I have no more religion than any one else.' They
conclude that the Revolution will soon be consummated, that
superstition and fanaticism must wholly give way to philosophy, and
they thus calculate the probabilities of the epoch and those of the
future society which will see the reign of reason.  The most aged
lament not being able to flatter themselves that they will see it; the
young rejoice in a reasonable prospect of seeing it, and especially do
they congratulate the Academy on having paved the way for the great
work, and on having been the headquarters, the center, the inspirer of
freedom of thought.

One of the guests had taken no part in this gay conversation a
person named Cazotte, an amiable and original man, but, unfortunately,
infatuated with the delusions of the visionary.  In the most serious
tone he begins: 'Gentlemen,' says he, 'be content; you will witness
this great revolution that you so much desire.  You know that I am
something of a prophet, and I repeat it, you will witness it.  .  .  .  Do
you know the result of this revolution, for all of you, so long as you
remain here?'  -  'Ah!' exclaims Condorcet with his shrewd, simple air
and smile, 'let us see, a philosopher is not sorry to encounter a
prophet.'  -  'You, Monsieur de Condorcet, will expire stretched on
the floor of a dungeon; you will die of the poison you take to escape
the executioner, of the poison which the felicity of that era will
compel you always to carry about your person!'  -  At first, great
astonishment, and then came an outburst of laughter.  'What has all
this in common with philosophy and the reign of reason?'  -
'Precisely what I have just remarked to you; in the name of
philosophy, of humanity, of freedom, under the reign of reason, you
will thus reach your end; and, evidently, the reign of reason will
arrive, for there will be temples of reason, and, in those days, in
all France, the temples will be those alone of reason.  .  .  .  You,
Monsieur de Champfort, you will sever your veins with twenty-two
strokes of a razor and yet you will not die for months afterwards.
You, Monsieur Vicq-d'Azir, you will not open your own veins but you
will have them opened six times in one day, in the agonies of gout, so
as to be more certain of success, and you will die that night.  You,
Monsieur de Nicolai, on the scaffold; you, Monsieur Bailly, on the
scaffold; you, Monsieur de Malesherbes, on the scaffold; .  .  .  you,
Monsieur Roucher, also on the scaffold.'  -  'But then we shall have
been overcome by Turks or Tartars?'  -  'By no means; you will be
governed, as I have already told you, solely by philosophy and reason.
Those who are to treat you in this manner will all be philosophers,
will all, at every moment, have on their lips the phrases you have
uttered within the hour, will repeat your maxims, will quote, like
yourselves, the stanzas of Diderot and of "La Pucelle."'  -  'And when
will all this happen?'  -  'Six years will not pass before what I tell
you will be accomplished.'  -  'Well, these are miracles,' exclaims La
Harpe, 'and you leave me out?'  -  'You will be no less a miracle, for
you will then be a Christian.'  -  'Ah,' interposes Champfort, I
breathe again; if we are to die only when La Harpe becomes a Christian
we are immortals.'  -  'As to that, we women,' says the Duchesse de
Gramont, 'are extremely fortunate in being of no consequence in
revolutions.  It is understood that we are not to blame, and our sex .
.  '  -  'Your sex, ladies, will not protect you this time.  .  .  .  You
will be treated precisely as men, with no difference whatever.  .  .  .
You, Madame la Duchesse, will be led to the scaffold, you and many
ladies besides yourself in a cart with your hands tied behind your
back.'  -  'Ah, in that event, I hope to have at least a carriage
covered with black.'  -  'No, Madame, greater ladies than yourself
will go, like yourself in a cart and with their hands tied like
yours.'  -  'Greater ladies! What! Princesses of the blood!'  -
'Still greater ladies than those .  .  .'They began to think the jest
carried too far.  Madame de Gramont, to dispel the gloom, did not
insist on a reply to her last exclamation, contenting herself by
saying in the lightest tone, 'And they will not even leave one a
confessor!'  -  'No, Madame, neither you nor any other person will be
allowed a confessor; the last of the condemned that will have one, as
an act of grace, will be .  .  .' He stopped a moment.  'Tell me, now,
who is the fortunate mortal enjoying this prerogative?'  -  'It is the
last that will remain to him, and it will be the King of France.'"

_____________________________________________________________________
Note:

[1] Laharpe, or La Harpe, Jean François.  (Paris 1739-1803).  Author
and critic, made a member of the Academy in 1776.  (SR).
----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------




END OF VOLUME NOTES:


NOTE 1.

ON THE NUMBER OF ECCLESIASTICS AND NOBLES.

These approximate estimates are arrived at in the following manner:

1.  The number of nobles in 1789 was unknown.  The genealogist
Chérin, in his "Abrégé chronologique des Edits, etc." (1789), states
that he is ignorant of the number.  Moheau, to whom Lavoisier refers in
his report, 1791, is equally ignorant in this respect.  ("Recherches
sur la population de la France," 1778, p.  105); Lavoisier states the
number as 83,000, while the Marquis de Bouillé ("Mémoires," p.50),
states 80,000 families; neither of these authorities advancing proofs
of their statements.  - I find in the "Catalogue nominatif des
gentilhommes en 1789," by Laroque and De Barthélemy, the number of
nobles voting, directly or by proxy, in the elections of 1789, in
Provence, Languedoc, Lyonnais, Forez, Beaujolais, Touraine, Normandy,
and Ile-de-France, as 9,167.   - According to the census of 1790,
given by Arthur Young in his "Travels in France," the population of
these provinces was 7,757,000, which gives a proportion of 30,000
nobles voting in a population of 26,000,000.  - On examining the law
and on summing up the lists, we find that each noble represents
somewhat less than a family, inasmuch as the son of the owner of a
fief votes if he is twenty-five years of age; I think, accordingly,
that we are not far out of the way in estimating the number of noble
families at 26,000 or 28,000, which number, at five individuals to the
family, gives 130,000 or 140,000 nobles.  -  The territory of France
in 1789 being 27,000 square leagues,[1] and the population 26,000,000,
we may assign one noble family to every square league of territory and
to every 1,000 inhabitants.

2.  Concerning the clergy I find in the National Archives, among the
ecclesiastical records, the following enumeration of monks belonging
to 28 orders:   Grand Augustins 694, Petits-Pères 250,
Barnabites 90, English Bénédictines 52, Bénédictines of Cluny 298, of
Saint-Vanne 612, of Saint-Maur 1,672, Citeaux 1,806, Récollets 2,238,
Prémontrés 399, Prémontrés Réformés 394, Capucins 3,720, Carmes
déchaussés 555, Grands-Carmes 853, Hospitaliers de Saint-Jean de Dieu
218, Chartreux 1,144, Cordeliers 2,018, Dominicans 1,172, Feuillants
148, Genovéfains 570, Mathurins 310, Minimes 684, Notre-Dame de la
Merci 31, Notre-Saveur 203, Tiers-Ordre de St.  François 365, Saint-
Jean des Vignes de Soissons 31, Théatins 25, abbaye de Saint-Victor
21, Maisons soumises à l'ordinaire 305.  Total 20,745 monks in 2,489
convents.  To this must be added the Pères de 1'Oratoire, de la
Mission, de la Doctrine chrétienne and some others; the total of monks
being about 23,000.  - As to nuns, I have a catalogue from the
National Archives of twelve dioceses, comprising according to "France
ecclésiastique" 1788, 5,576 parishes: the diocèses respectively of
Perpignan, Tulle, Marseilles, Rhodez, Saint-Flour, Toulouse, le Mans,
Limoges, Lisieux, Rouen, Reims, and Noyon, in all, 5,394 nuns in 198
establishments.  The proportion is 37,000 nuns in 1,500 establishments
for the 38,000 parishes of France.  -  The total of regular clergy
thus amounts to 60,000 persons.  -  The secular clergy may be
estimated at 70,000: curates and vicars 60,000 ("Histoire de l'Eglise
de France," XII.  142, by the Abbé Guettée); prelates, vicars-general,
canons of chapters, 2,800; collegiate canons, 5,600; ecclésiastics
without livings, 3,000 (Sieyès).  Moheau, a clear-headed and cautious
statistician, writes in 1778 ("Recheches," p.  100): "Perhaps, to day,
there are 130,000 ecclesiastics in the kingdom." The enumeration of
1866 ("Statistique de la France," population), gives 51,100 members of
the secular clergy, 18,500 monks, 86,300 nuns; total, 155,900 in a
population of 38,000,000 inhabitants.
_________________________________________________________________________
Notes:
[1] In 1998, 550 000 square kilometers.  (SR.)

[2] Archives nationales, G.  319 ("Etat actuel de la Direction de
Bourges au point de vue des aides," 1774).

[3] Blet, at the present day, contains 1,629 inhabitants.  (This was
around 1884, in 1996 it remains a small commune and a village of 800
people on the route nationale N76 between Bourges and Sancoins.  SR.)

[4] The farms of Blet and Brosses really produce nothing for the
proprietor, inasmuch as the tithes and the champart (field-rents),
(articles 22 and 23), are comprehended in the rate of the leases.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

END NOTE 2:

ON FEUDAL RIGHTS AND ON THE STATE OF FEUDAL DOMINION IN 1733.

The following information, for which I am indebted to M. de
Boislisle, is derived from an act of partition drawn up September 6,
1783.

It relates to the estates of Blet and Brosses.  The barony and
estate of Blet lies in Bourbonnais, two leagues from Dun-le-Roi.  Blet,
says a memorandum of an administrator of the Excise, is a "good
parish; the soil is excellent, mostly in wood and pasture, the surplus
being in tillable land for wheat, rye and oats.  .  .  .  The roads are
bad, especially in winter.  The trade consists principally of horned
cattle and embraces grain; the woods rot away on account of their
remoteness from the towns and the difficulty of turning them to
account."[1]

"This estate," says the act of valuation, "is in royal tenure on
account of the king's chateau and fortress of Ainay, under the
designation of the town of Blet." The town was formerly fortified and
its castle still remains.  Its population was once large, "but the
civil wars of the sixteenth century, and especially the emigration of
the Protestants caused it to be deserted to such an extent that out of
its former population of 3,000 scarcely 300 remain,[2] which is the fate
of nearly all the towns in this country." The estate of Blet, for many
centuries in the possession of the Sully family, passed, on the
marriage of the heiress in 1363, to the house of Saint-Quentin, and
was then transmitted in direct line down to 1748, the date of the
death of Alexander II.  of Saint-Quentins, Count of Diet, governor of
Berg-op-Zoom, and father of three daughters from whom the actual heirs
descend.  These heirs are the Count de Simiane, the Chevalier de
Simiane, and the minors of Bercy, each party owning one-third,
represented by 97,667 livres in the Blet estate, and 20,408 livres in
the Brosses estate.  The eldest, Comte de Simiane, enjoys, besides, a
préciput (according to custom in the Bourbonnais), worth 15,000
livres, comprising the castle with the adjoining farm and the
seigniorial rights, honorary as well as profitable.

The entire domain, comprising both estates, is valued at 369,227
livres.  The estate of Blet, comprises 1,437 arpents, worked by seven
farmers and furnished, by the proprietor, with cattle valued at 13,781
livres.  They pay together to the proprietor 12,060 livres rent
(besides claims for poultry and corvées).  One, only, has a large farm,
paying 7,800 livres per annum, the others paying rents of 1,300, 740,
640, and 240 livres per annum.  The Brosses estate comprises 515
arpents, worked by two farmers to whom the proprietor furnishes cattle
estimated at 3,750 livres, and these together return to the proprietor
2,240 livres.[3] These métairies are all poor; only one of them has two
rooms with fire-places; two or three, one room with a fire-place; the
others consist of a kitchen with an oven outside, and stables and
barns.  Repairs on the tenements are essential on all the farms except
three, "having been neglected for thirty years."  "The mill-flume
requires to be cleaned out, and the stream, whose inundations injure
the large meadow; also repairs are necessary on the banks of the two
ponds; on the church, which is the seignior's duty, the roof being in
a sad state, the rain penetrating through the arch;" and the roads
require mending, these being in a deplorable condition during the
winter.  "The restoration and repairs of these roads seem never to have
been thought of." The soil of the Blet estate is excellent, but it
requires draining and ditching to carry off the water, otherwise the
low lands will continue to produce nothing but weeds.  Signs of neglect
and desertion are everywhere visible.  The chateau of Blet has remained
unoccupied since 1748; the furniture, accordingly, is almost all
decayed and useless; in 1748 this was worth 7,612 livres, and now it
is estimated at 1,000 livres.  "The water-power costs nearly as much to
maintain as the income derived from it.  The use of plaster as manure
is unknown," and yet "in the land of plaster it costs almost nothing."
The ground, moist and very good, would grow excellent live hedges; and
yet the fields are enclosed with bare fences against the cattle,
"which expense, say the farmers, is equal to a third of the net
income." This domain, as just described, is valued as follows:

 1.  The estate of Blet, according to the custom of the country for
noble estates, is valued at rate twenty-five, namely, 373,000 livres,
from which must be deducted a capital of 65,056 livres, representing
the annual charges (the fixed salary of the curate, repairs, etc.),
not including personal charges like the vingtièmes.  Its net revenue
per annum is 12,300 livres, and is worth, net, 308,003 livres.

 2.  The estate of Brosses is estimated at rate twenty-two, ceasing
to be noble through the transfer of judicial and fief rights to that
of Blet.  Thus rated it is worth 73,583 livres, from which must be
deducted a capital of 12,359 livres for actual charges, the estate
bringing in 3,140 livres per annum and worth, net, 61,224 livres.
These revenues are derived from the following sources:

1.   Rights of the high, low and middle courts of justice over
the entire territory of Blet and other villages, Brosses and Jalay.
The upper courts, according to an act passed at the Chatelet, April
29, 1702, "take cognizance of all actions, real and personal, civil
and criminal, even actions between nobles and ecclesiastics, relating
to seals and inventories of movable effects, tutelages, curacies, the
administration of the property of minors, of domains, and of the
customary dues and revenues of the seigniory, etc."

2.  Rights of the forests, edict of 1707.  The seignior's warden
decides in all cases concerning waters, and woods, and customs, and
crimes relating to fishing and hunting.

3.  Right of voirie or the police of the highways, streets, and
buildings (excepting the great main roads).  The seignior appoints a
bailly, warden and road overseer, one M. Theurault (at Sagonne), a
fiscal attorney, Baujard (at Blet); he may remove them "in case they
make no returns." "The rights of the greffe were formerly secured to
the seignior, but as it is now very difficult to find intelligent
persons in the country able to fulfill its functions, the seignior
abandons his rights to those whom it may concern." (The seignior pays
forty-eight livres per annum to the bailly to hold his court once a
month, and twenty-four livres per annum to the fiscal attorney to
attend them).

He receives the fines and confiscation of cattle awarded by his
officers.  The profit therefrom, an average year, is eight livres.

He must maintain a jail and a jailer.  (It is not stated whether
there was one).  No sign of a gibbet is found in the seigniory.

He may appoint twelve notaries; only one, in fact, is appointed at
Blet "and he has nothing to do," a M. Baujard, fiscal attorney.  This
commission is assigned him gratuitously, to keep up the privilege,
"otherwise it would be impossible to find any one sufficiently
intelligent to perform its functions."

He appoints a sergeant, but, for a long time, this sergeant pays no
rent or anything for his lodging.

4.  Personal and real taille.  In Bourbonnais the taille was formerly
serf and the serfs mainmortable.  "Seigniors still possessing rights of
bordelage, well established throughout their fiefs and courts, at the
present time, enjoy rights of succession to their vassals in all
cases, even to the prejudice of their children if non-resident and no
longer dwelling under their roofs." But in 1255, Hodes de Sully,
having granted a charter, renounced this right of real and personal
taille for a right of bourgeoisie, still maintained, (see further on).

5.  Right to unclaimed property, cattle, furniture, effects, stray
swarms of bees, treasure-trove; (no profits from this for twenty years
past).

6.  Right to property of deceased persons without heirs, to that of
deceased bastards, the possessions of condemned criminals either to
death, to the galleys or to exile, etc., (no profit).

7.  Right of the chase and of fishing, the latter worth fifteen
livres per annum.

8.  Right of bourgeoisie (see article 4), according to the charter
of 1255, and the court-roll of 1484.  The wealthiest pay annually
twelve bushels of oats at forty livres and twelve deniers parasis; the
less wealthy nine bushels and nine deniers; all others six bushels and
six deniers.  "These rights of bourgeoisie are well established, set
forth in all court-rolls and acknowledgments rendered to the king and
perpetuated by numerous admissions the motives that have led former
stewards and fermiers to interrupt the collection of these cannot be
divined.  Many of the seigniors in Bourbonnais have the benefit of and
exact these taxes of their vassals by virtue of titles much more open
to question than those of the seigniors of Blet."

9.  Rights of protection of the chateau of Blet.  The royal edict of
1497, fixing this charge for the inhabitants of Blet and all those
dwelling within the jurisdiction of its tribunals, those of Charly,
Boismarvier, etc., at five sous per fire per annum, which has been
carried out.  "Only lately has the collection of this been suspended,
notwithstanding its recognition at no late date, the inhabitants all
admitting themselves to be subject to the said guet et garde of the
chateau.

10.  Right of toll on all merchandise and provisions passing through
the town of Blet, except grain, flour and vegetables.  (A trial pending
before the Council of State since 1727 and not terminated in 1745;
"the collection thereof, meanwhile, being suspended").

11.  Right of potage on wines sold at retail in Blet, ensuring to
the seignior nine pints of wine per cask, leased in 1782 for six
years, at sixty livres per annum.

12.  Right of boucherie or of taking the tongues of all animals
slaughtered in the town, with, additionally, the heads and feet of all
calves.  No slaughter-house at Blet, and yet "during the harvesting of
each year about twelve head of cattle are slaughtered." This tax is
collected by the steward and is valued at three livres per annum.

13.  Right of fairs and markets, aunage, weight and measures.  Five
fairs per annum and one market-day each week, but little frequented;
no grain-market.  This right is valued at twenty-four livres per annum.

14.  Corvées of teams and manual labor, through seigniorial right,
on ninety-seven persons at Blet (twenty-two carvées of teams and
seventy-five of manual labor), twenty-six persons at Brosses (five
teams and twenty-one hands).  The seignior pays six sous for food, each
corvée, on men, and twelve sous on each corvee of four oxen.  "Among
those subject to this corvée the larger number are reduced almost to
beggary and have large families, which often induces the seignior not
to exact this right rigorously." The reduced value of the corvées is
forty-nine livres fifteen sols.

15.  Benalité (socome), of the mill, (a sentence of 1736 condemning
Roy, a laborer, to have his grain ground in the mill of Blet, and to
pay a fine for having ceased to have grain ground there during three
years).  The miller reserves a sixteenth of the flour ground.  The
district-mill, as well as the windmill, with six arpents adjoining,
are leased at 600 livres per annum.

16.  Banalité of the oven.  Agreement of 1537 between the seignior
and his vassals: he allows them the privilege of a small oven in their
domicile of three squares, six inches each, to bake pies, biscuits and
cakes; in other respects subject to the district oven.  He is entitled
to one-sixteenth of the dough; this right might produce 150 livres
annually, but, for several years, the oven has been dilapidated.

17.  Right of the colombier, dove-cot.  The chateau park contains
one.

18.  Right of bordelage.  (The seignior is heir-at-law, except when
the children of the deceased live with their parents at the time of
his death.  This right covers an area of forty-eight arpentss.  For
twenty years, through neglect or from other causes, he has derived
nothing from this.

19.  Right over waste and abandoned ground and to alluvial
accumulations.

20.  Right, purely honorary, of seat and burial in the choir, of
incense and of special prayer, of funeral hangings outside and inside
the church.

21.  Rights of lods et ventes on copyholders, due by the purchaser
of property liable to this lien, in forty days.  "In Bourbonnais, the
lods et ventes are collected at a third, a quarter, at the sixth,
eighth and twelfth rate." The seignior of Blet and Brosses collects at
rate six.  It is estimated that sales are made once in eighty years;
these rights bear on 1,356 arpents which are worth, the best, 192
livres per arpent the second best, 110 livres, the poorest, 75 livres.
At this rate the 1,350 arpents are worth 162,750 livres.  A discount of
one-quarter of the lods et ventes is allowed to purchasers.  Annual
revenue of this right 254 livres.

22.  Right of tithe and of charnage.  The seignior has obtained all
tithe rights, save a few belonging to the canons of Don-le-Rol and to
the prior of Chaumont.  The tithes are levied on the thirteenth sheaf.
They are comprised in the leases.

23.  Right of terrage or champart: the right of collecting, after
the tithes, a portion of the produce of the ground.  "In Bourbonnais,
the terrage is collected in various ways, on the third sheaf, on the
fifth, sixth, seventh, and commonly one-quarter; at Blet it is the
twelfth." The seignior of Blet collects terrage only on a certain
number of the farms of his seigniory; "in relation to Brosses, it
appears that all domains possessed by copyholders are subject to the
right." These rights of terrage are comprised in the leases of the
farms of Blet and of Brosses.

24.  Cens, surcens and rentes due on real property of different
kinds, houses, fields, meadows, etc., situated in the territory of the
seigniory.  In the seigniory of Blet, 810 arpents, divided into 511
portions, in the hands of 120 copyholders, are in this condition, and
their cens annually consists of 137 francs in money, sixty-seven
bushels of wheat, three of barley, 159 of oats, sixteen hens, 130
chickens, six cocks and capons; the total valued at 575 francs.  On the
Brosses estate, eighty-five arpents, divided into 112 parcels, in the
hands of twenty copyholders, are in this condition, and their total
cens is fourteen francs money, seventeen bushels of wheat, thirty-two
of barley, twenty-six hens, three chickens and one capon; the whole
valued at 126 francs.

25.  Rights over the commons (124 arpents in Blet and 164 arpents in
Brosses).

The vassals have on these only the right of use.  "Almost the whole
of the land, on which they exercise this right of pasturage, belongs
to the seigniors, save this right with which they are burdened; it is
granted only to a few individuals."

26.  Rights over the fiefs mouvants of the barony of Blet.  Some are
situated in Bourbonnais, nineteen being in this condition.  In
Bourbonnais, the fiefs, even when owned by plebeians, simply owe la
bouche et les mains to the seignior at each mutation.  Formerly the
seignior of Blet enforced, in this case, the right of redemption which
has been allowed to fall into desuetude.  Others are situated in Berry
where the right of redemption is exercised.  One fief in Berry, that of
Cormesse held by the archbishop of Bourges, comprising eighty-five
arpents, besides a portion of the tithes, and producing 2,100 livres
per annum, admitting a mutation every twenty years, annually brings to
the seignior of Blet 105 livres.

Besides the charges indicated there are the following:

1.  To the curate of Blet, his fixed salary.  According to royal
enactment in 1686, this should be 300 livres.  According to arrangement
in 1692, the curate, desirous of assuring himself of this fixed
salary, yielded to the seignior all the dimes, novales, etc.  The edict
of 1768 having fixed the curate's salary at 500 livres, the curate
claimed this sum through writs.  The canons of Dun-le-Roi and the prior
of Chaumont, possessing tithes on the territory of Blet, were obliged
to pay a portion of it.  At present it is at the charge of the seignior
of Blet.

2.  To the guard, besides his lodging, warming and the use of three
arpents, 200 livres.

3.  To the steward or registrar, to preserve the archives, look
after repairs, collect lods et ventes, and fines, 432 livres, besides
the use of ten arpente.

4.  To the king, the vingtièmes.  Formerly the estates of Blet and
Brosses paid 810 livres for the two vingtièmes and the two sous per
livre.  After the establishment of the third vingtième they paid 1,216
livres.

Notes:
[1] Archives nationales, G. 319 ("Etat actuel de la Direction de Bourges au 
point de vue des aides," 1774).

[2] Blet, at the present day, contains 1,629 inhabitants. (This was around 
1884, in 1996 it remains a small commune and a village of 800 people on the 
route nationale N76 between Bourges and Sancoins. SR.)

[3] The farms of Blet and Brosses really produce nothing for the proprietor, 
inasmuch as the tithes and the champart (field-rents), (articles 22 and 23), 
are comprehended in the rate of the leases.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

END-NOTE 3:

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE ACTUAL AND NOMINAL REVENUES OF
ECCLESIASTICAL DIGNITIES AND BENEFICES.

According to Raudot ("La France avant la Revolution," p.84), one-
half extra must be added to the official valuation; according to
Boiteau ("Etat de la France en 1789," p.195), this must be tripled and
even quadrupled.  I think that, for the episcopal sees, one-half extra
should be added and, for the abbeys and priories, double, and
sometimes triple and even quadruple the amount.  The following facts
show the variation between official and actual sums.

1.  In the "Almanach Royal," the bishopric of Troyes is valued at
14,000 livres; in "France Ecclésiastique of 1788," at 50,000.
According to Albert Babeau ("Histoire de la Révolution dans le
department de l'Aube"), it brings in 70,000 livres.  In "France
Ecclésiastique," the bishopric of Strasbourg is put down at 400,000
livres.  According to the Duc de Lévis ("Souvenirs," p.  156) it brings
in at least 600,000 livres income.

2.  In the same work, the abbey of Jumiéges is assigned for 23,000
livres.  I find, in the papers of the ecclesiastic committee, it brings
to the abbé 50,000 livres.  In this work the abbey of Bèze is estimated
at 8,000 livres.  I find it bringing to the monks alone 30,000, while
the abbés portion is at least as large.  ("De l'Etat religieux, par les
abbés de Bonnefoi et Bernard.," 1784).  The abbé thus receives 30,000
livres, Bernay (Eure),.  is officially reported at 16,000.  The
"Doleances" of the cahiers estimate it at 57,000.  Saint-Amand is put
down as bringing to the Cardinal of York 6,000 livres and actually
brings him 100,000.  (De Luynes, XIII.  215).

Clairvaux, in the same work, is put down at 9,000, and in
Warroquier ("Etat Général de la France en 1789,") at 60,000.  According
to Beugnot, who belongs to the country, and a practical man, the abbé
has from 300,000 to 400,000 livres income.

Saint-Faron, says Boiteau, set down at 18,000 livres, is worth
120,000 livres.

The abbey of Saint-Germain des Près (in the stewardships), is put
down at 100,000 livres.  The Comte de Clermont, who formerly had it,
leased it at 160, 000 livres, "not including reserved fields and all
that the farmers furnished in straw and oats for his horses." (Jules
Cousin, "Comte de Clermont and his Court.")

Saint-Waas d'Arras, according to "La France Ecclésiastique," brings
40,000 livres.  Cardinal de Rohan refused 1,000 livres per month for
his portion offered to him by the monks.  (Duc de Lévis, "Souvenirs,"
p.  156).  Its value thus is about 300,000 livres.

Remiremont, the abbess always being a royal princess, one of the
most powerful monasteries, the richest and best endowed, is officially
valued at the ridiculous sum of 15,000 livres.
------------------------------------------------------------------------



END-NOTE 4:

ON THE EDUCATION OF PRINCES AND PRINCESSES.

An entire chapter might be devoted to this subject; I shall cite
but a few texts.

(Barbier, "Journal," October, 1670).  The Dauphine has just given
birth to an infant.

"La jeune princesse en est a sa quatrieme nourrice.  .  .  .  Jai
appris à cette occasion que tout se fait par forme à la cour, suivant
un protocole de médecin, en sorte que c'est un miracle d'élever un
prince et une princesse.  La nourrice n'a d'autres fonctions que de
donner à têter à l'enfant quand on le lui apporte; elle ne peut pas
lui toucher.  Il y a des remueuses et femmes préposées pour cela, mais
qui n'ont point d'ordre à recevoir de la nourrice.  Il y a des heures
pour remuer l'enfant, trois ou quatre fois dans la journée.  Si
l'enfant dort, on le réveille pour le remuer.  Si, après avoir été
changé, il fait dans ses langes, il reste ainsi trois ou quatre heures
dans son ordure.  Si une epingle le pique, la nourrice ne doit pas
l'ôter; il faut chercher et attendre une autre femme; l'enfant crie
dans tons ces cas, il se tuurmente et s'échauffe, en sorte que c'est
une vraie misère que toutes ces cérémonies."

(Madame de Genlis, "Souvenirs de Félicie," p.74.  Conversation with
Madame Louise, daughter of Louis XV., and recently become a
Carmelite).

"I should like to know what troubled you most in getting accustomed
to your new profession?

"You could never imagine," she replied, smiling.  "It was the
descent of a small flight of steps alone by myself.  At first it seemed
to me a dreadful precipice, and I was obliged to sit down on the steps
and slide down in that attitude."   - "A princess, indeed, who had
never descended any but the grand staircase at Versailles, leaning on
the arm of her cavalier in waiting and surrounded by pages,
necessarily trembled on finding herself alone on the brink of steep
winding steps.  (Such is) the education, so absurd in many respects,
generally bestowed on persons of this rank; always watched from
infancy, followed, assisted, escorted and everything anticipated,
(they) are thus, in great part, deprived of the faculties with which
nature has endowed them."



Madame Campan, "Mémoires," I.  58, 28.

"Madame Louise often told me that, although twelve years of age,
she had not fully learned the alphabet.  .  .  .

"It was necessary to decide absolutely whether a certain water-bird
was fat or lean.  Madame Victoire consulted a bishop.  .  .  .  He replied
that, in a doubt of this kind, after having the bird cooked it would
be necessary to puncture it on a very cold silver dish and, if the
juice coagulated in one-quarter of an hour, the bird might be
considered fat.  Madame Victoire immediately put it to test; the juice
did not coagulate.  The princess was highly delighted, as she was very
fond of this species of game.  Fasting (on religious grounds), to which
Madame Victoire was addicted, put her to inconvenience; accordingly
she awaited the midnight stroke of Holy Saturday impatiently.  A dish
of chicken and rice and other succulent dishes were then at once
served up."

("Journal de Dumont d'Urville," commanding the vessel on which
Charles X.  left France in 1830.  Quoted by Vaulabelle, History of the
Restoration, VIII.  p.465).

"The king and the Duc d'Angoulême questioned me on my various
campaigns, but especially on my voyage around the world in the
'Astrolabe.' My narrative seemed to interest them very much, their
interruptions consisting of questions of remarkable naiveté, showing
that they possessed no notions whatever, even the most superficial, on
the sciences or on voyages, being as ignorant on these points as any
of the old rentiers of the Marais.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

                               Note 5.
                     On the rate of direct taxation.

The following figures are extracted from the proces-verbaux of the 
provincial assemblies (1778-1787)

______________________________________________________________________
                               Access-                           Total en
                     Taille.   iores de   Capitation Impot des  multiples
                               la taille. taillable. routes. de la taille.

__________________________________________________________________________
Ile-de-France,        4,296,040  2,207,826  2,689,287   519,989     2,23
Lyonnais,             1,356,954    903,653    898,089   315,869     2,61
Géneralité de Rouen,  2,671,939  1,595,051  1,715,592   598,258[1]  2,46
Généralité de Caen,   1,939,665  1,212,429  1,187,823   659,034     2,56
Berry,                  821,921    448,431    464,955   236,900     2,50
Poitou,               2,309,681  1,113,766  1,403,402   520,000     2,30
Soissonnats,          1,062,392    911,883    734,899   462,883     2,94
Orléanais,            2,353,892  1,256,125  1,485,720   586,385     2,34
Champagne,            1,783,850  1,459,780  1,377,371   807,280     3,00
Généralité d'Alencon, 1,742,655  1,120,041  1,067,849   435,637     2,47
Auvergne              1,999,040  1,399,678  1,753,026   310,468     2,70
Généralité d'Auch,    1,440,533    931,261    797,268   316,909[2]  2,35
Haute-Guyenne,        2,531,314  1,267,619  1,268,855   308,993[3]  2,47
_______________________________________________________________________



The principal of the taille being one, the figures in the last
column represent, for each province, the total of the four taxes in
relation to the taille.  The average of all these is 2.53.  The
accessories of the taille, the poll-tax and the tax for roads, are
fixed for each assessable party, pro rata to his taille.  Multiply the
sum representing the portion of the taille deducted from a net income
by 2.53, to know the sum of the four taxes put together and deducted
from this income.
This part varies from province to province, from parish to parish,
and even from individual to individual.  Nevertheless we may estimate
that the taille, on the average, especially when bearing on a small
peasant proprietor, without protector or influence, abstracts one-
sixth of his net income, say 16 fr.  66 c.  on 100 francs.  For example,
according to the declarations of the provincial assemblies, in
Champagne, it deducts 3 sous and 2/3 of a denier per livre, or 15 fr.
28 c.  on 100 francs; in the Ile-de-France, 35 livres 14 sous on 240
livres, or 14 fr.  87 c.  on 100; in Auvergne, 4 sous per livre of the
net income, that is to say, 20 %.  Finally, in the generalship of Auch,
the provincial assembly estimates that the taille and accessories
absorb three-tenths of the net revenue, by which it is evident that,
taking the amounts of the provincial budget, the taille alone absorbs
eighteen fr.  ten c.  on 100 francs of revenue.
Thus stated, if the taille as principal absorbs one-sixth of the
net income of the subject of the taille, that is to say, 16 fr.  66 c.
on 100, the total of the four taxes above mentioned, takes 16 fr.  66
c.  X 2,53 = 42 fr.  15 c.  on 100 fr.  income.  To which must be added 11
fr.  for the two vingtièmes and 4 sous per livre added to the first
vingtième, total 53 fr.  15 c.  direct tax on 100 livres income subject
to the taille.
The dime, tithe, being estimated at a seventh of the net income,
abstracts in addition 14 ft.  28 c.  The feudal dues being valued at the
same sum also take off 14 fr.  28 c., total 28 fr.  56 c.
Sum total of deductions of the direct royal tax, of the
ecclesiastic tithes, and of feudal dues, 81 fr.  71c.  on 100 fr.
income.  There remain to the tax.  payer 18 fr.  29 C.
_____________________________________________________________________

Notes:
[1] This amount is not given by the provincial assembly; to fill up
this blank I have taken the tenth of the taille, of the accessories
and of the assessable poll-tax, this being the mode followed by the
provincial assembly of Lyonnais.  By the declaration of June 2, 1717,
the tax on roads may be carried to one-sixth of the three preceding
taxes it is commonly one-tenth or, in relation to the principal of the
taille, one-quarter.
[2] - Same remark.  -
[3] The provincial assembly carries this amount to one-eleventh of
the taille and accessories combined.