The Ancient Regime Part 30

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 cla.s.s, 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[4301]. 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...o...b..t. 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!"[4302] 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 ma.s.s 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 mult.i.tude, the crowd exclaims: Behold the true Romans, the fathers of the country! and as the two counselors Pucelle and Menguy pa.s.s 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 creditors.h.i.+p.--He interests himself in public matters.

The uprising is, however, late to catch on among the middle cla.s.s, 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.[4303] This great expansion of enterprises, of trade, of speculation and of fortunes dates from Law;[4304] 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 s.h.i.+ps 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."[4305] 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[4306]. 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 fas.h.i.+on 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[4307]. 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 n.o.blest hands stretching out to receive them, princes of the blood, provincial a.s.semblies, a.s.semblies 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[4308]. What creditors which these few figures tell us about! As the Third-Estate, it must be noted, is the sole cla.s.s 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[4309]. According to official admissions[4310] 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 Lomenie inclusive,"[4311]

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[4312]. "Were their capital invested in its loans, they could never rely on a fixed date for the payment of interest. Did they build s.h.i.+ps, 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[4313]. In 1788, so great is the distress, the Minister de Lomenie 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 cla.s.s which, thus far, had obeyed without a murmur and never dreamed of bringing the established order of things under its control. Henceforth this cla.s.s 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 n.o.ble draws near to him.

--He becomes cultivated.--He enters into society.--He regards himself as the equal of the n.o.ble.--Privileges an annoyance.

Meanwhile this cla.s.s has climbed up the social ladder, and, through its elite, rejoined those in the highest position. Formerly between Dorante and M. Jourdain, between Don Juan and M. Dimanche,[4314] 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 n.o.bles are drawn nearer to the Third-Estate and, on the other, the Third-Estate is drawn nearer to the n.o.bles, 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[4315]. "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[4316].

"As it was difficult to accept the idea that the grandson of my father, whom we just had seen pa.s.s 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 ap.r.o.n, 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 n.o.bles 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[4317]. 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 n.o.bility, 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[4318]

remarks that one of the first expressions employed in praise of a man is, "he has a very graceful address." The Marechale 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 d.u.c.h.esses 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 n.o.bility, 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 Henin;[4319] "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 Segur, 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."[4320] 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."[4321] 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 cla.s.ses and this transfer of parts what remains of the superiority of the n.o.bles? By what special merit, through what recognized capacity are they to secure respect of a member of the Third-Estate? Outside of fas.h.i.+onable 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 n.o.ble, 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 Cherin, the genealogist, refuses commoners, and where the Abbe Bosen, a mathematician, rejects the ignorant, it is discovered that capacity is wanting among the n.o.ble pupils and n.o.bility among the capable pupils,[4322] 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,[4323] 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 n.o.bles 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. n.o.bility being inst.i.tuted 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 n.o.ble 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 n.o.bility barring all roads to popular advancement, are, then, the sentiments developing themselves among the middle cla.s.s solely due to their advance in wealth and culture.--We can imagine the effect of the new philosophy upon people with such att.i.tudes. 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 cla.s.s. 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 ama.s.sed considerable property, always at the expense of the people, and all this merely that they may rest themselves and do nothing."[4324]

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 n.o.bility, 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 cafes, 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 ma.s.ses 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 ma.s.ses 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[4325]. 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."[4326] 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 impa.s.sioned 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,[4327] writes in 1799:

"Rousseau had a hundred times more readers among the middle and lower cla.s.ses 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,[4328]

by young lawyers, by the ordinary lettered cla.s.ses swarming with new-fledged specialist in public law." Hundreds of details show us that it is in every hand like a catechism. In 1784[4329] certain magistrates'

sons, on taking their first lesson in jurisprudence of an a.s.sistant 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[4330]. 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 cla.s.s able to read[4331]. "A few days ago," says Metra,[4332] "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 att.i.tude both of the public and of the studios[4333] The spirit is that of Rousseau, "the republican spirit;"[4334] the entire middle cla.s.s, 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 pa.s.sions, ambition, envy, desire for freedom, zeal for the public welfare and the consciousness of right.

V. Revolutionary Pa.s.sions.

Its effects therein.--The formation of revolutionary pa.s.sions.--Leveling instincts.--The craving for dominion.-- The Third-Estate decides and const.i.tutes the nation.-- Chimeras, ignorance, exaltation.

All these pa.s.sions 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[4335]. The Third-Estate, considering itself deprived of the place to which it is ent.i.tled, 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 regime while attempting to grow easier, appear to be still more burdensome, and its pinp.r.i.c.ks exasperate as if they were so many wounds. Countless instances might be quoted instead of one.--At the theater in Gren.o.ble, Barnave,[4336] a child, is with his mother in a box which the Duc de Tonnerre, governor of the province, had a.s.signed 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,[4337] 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 a.s.sured that, with Marat, a veterinary surgeon in the Comte d'Artois's stables, with Robespierre, a protege 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 fas.h.i.+on. The concentrated bitterness with which Madame Roland's memoirs are imbued has no other cause. "She could not forgive society[4338] for the inferior position she had so long occupied in it."[4339] 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,[4340] 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 Penthievre the n.o.bles 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."[4341] 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 Henault 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 Henault, "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."[4342] To a rebellious heart everything is an object of resentment. The Third-Estate, following Rousseau's example, cherishes ill-feeling against the n.o.bles 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. Sieyes 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 t.i.tle of the French n.o.bility," 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 n.o.bility, 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."[4343]--

"Why should not the Third-Estate send back," says Sieyes, "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? [4344] I can well imagine, were there no police, every Cartouche[4345] firmly establis.h.i.+ng 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 n.o.bles 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 n.o.bles 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 cla.s.s 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 a.s.signed 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 Sieyes, "everything. What, thus far, is it in the political body?[4346] 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 n.o.ble, 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.