书城公版The Origins of Contemporary France
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第171章

-- 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 *******, 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 ****** 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.