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
4301 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.”
4302 Aubertin, ibid., 180, 362.
4303 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.”
4304 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.)
4305 Arthur Young, II. 360, 373.
4306 De Tocqueville, 255.
4307 Aubertin, 482.
4308 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.
4309 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.)
4310 Roux and Buchez, I. 190. “Rapport,” M. de Calonne.
4311 Champfort, p. 105.
4312 De Tocqueville, 261.
4313 D’Argenson, April 12, 1752, February 11, 1752, July 24, 1753, December 7, 1753.—Archives nationales, O1, 738.
4314 Characters in Molière’s comedies.—TR.
4315 De Ségur. I. 17.
4316 Lucas de Montigny, Letter of the Marquis de Mirabeau, March 23, 1783.
4317 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.”
4318 John Andrews, “A comparative view,” etc. p. 58.
4319 De Tilly, “Mémoires,” I. 31.
4320 Goffroy, “Gustave III,” letter of Mme. Staël (August, 1786).
4321 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.
4322 Champfort, 119.
4323 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.)
4324 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).
4325 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.
4326 De Barante, “Tableau de la littérature française au dix-huitième siècle,” 312.
4327 “Mercure britannique,” vol. II, 360.
4328 Lacretelle, “Dix ans d’épreuves,” p. 21.
4329 “Memoires,” by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de France. in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893.
4330 “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.”
4331 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.
4332 “Correspondence,” by Métra, XVII, 87 (August 20, 1784).
4333 “Belisarious,” is from 1780, and the “Oath of the Horatii,” from 1783.
4334 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).
4335 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.)
4336 Sainte-Beuve, “Causeries du Lundi,” II. 24, in the article on Barnave.
4337 Dr Tilly, “Mémoires,” I. 243.
4338 The words of Fontanes, who knew her and admired her. (Sainte-Beuve, “Nouveaux Lundis,” VIII. 221).
4339 “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.)
4340 De Vaublanc, I. 153.
4341 Beugnot, “Mémoires,” I. 77.
4342 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.”)
4343 Champfort, 335.
4344 Sieyès, “Qu’est ce que le Tiers?” 17, 41, 139, 166.
4345 Cartouche (Luis Dominique) (Paris, 1693—id. 1721). Notorious French bandit, leader of a gang of thieves. He died broken alive on the wheel. (SR.)
4346 “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).
4347 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.
4348 Prud’homme, ibid.., Cahiers of the Third-Estates of Dijon, Dax, Bayonne, Saint-Sévère, Rennes, etc.
4349 Marmontel, “Mémoires,” II. 247.
4350 Arthur Young, I. 222.
4351 Malouet, “Mémoires,” I. 279.
4352 De Lavalette, I. 7.—“Souvenirs”, by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de France. in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893.—. Cf. Brissot, Mémoires, I.
4353 Prudhomme, “Résumé des cahiers,” the “preface,” by J. J. Rousseau.
4354 Marmontel, II. 245.