and emphasize the faults of a poor, unfortunate, demented
man. We can hardly blame them; for, in their eyes, Rousseau appeared as
a kind of mad dog--a pest to society, deserving of no quarter. They did
not realize--they _could_ not--that beneath the meanness and the frenzy
that were so obvious to them was the soul of a poet and a seer. The
wretched man wandered for long in Switzerland, in Germany, in England,
pursued by the ever-deepening shadows of his maniacal suspicions. At
last he returned to France, to end his life, after years of lingering
misery, in obscurity and despair.

Rousseau and Voltaire both died in 1778--hardly more than ten years
before the commencement of the Revolution. Into that last decade of the
old regime there seemed to be concentrated all the ardour, all the hope,
all the excitement, all the brilliance of the preceding century. Had not
Reason and Humanity triumphed at last? Triumphed, at any rate, in
spirit; for who was not converted? All that remained now was the final,
quick, easy turn which would put into action the words of the
philosophers and make this earth a paradise. And still new visions kept
opening out before the eyes of enthusiasts--strange speculations and
wondrous possibilities. The march of mind seemed so rapid that the most
advanced thinkers of yesterday were already out of date. 'Voltaire est
bigot: il est deiste,' exclaimed one of the wits of Paris, and the
sentiment expressed the general feeling of untrammelled mental freedom
and swift progression which was seething all over the country. It was at
this moment that the production of BEAUMARCHAIS' brilliant comedy, _Le
Mariage de Figaro_, electrified the intellectual public of Versailles
and the capital. In that play the old regime was presented, not in the
dark colours of satire, but under the sparkling light of frivolity,
gaiety, and idleness--a vision of endless intrigue and vapid love-making
among the antiquated remains of feudal privileges and social caste. In
this fairyland one being alone has reality--Figaro, the restless,
fiendishly clever, nondescript valet, sprung from no one knows where,
destined to no one knows what, but gradually emerging a strange and
sinister profile among the laughter and the flowers. 'What have you
done, Monsieur le Comte,' he bursts out at last to his master, 'to
deserve all these advantages?--I know. _Vous vous etes donne la peine de
naitre_!' In that sentence one can hear--far off, but dis