de
with the privileged class, the disturbances again begin, but this time
against the Parliaments. In February 1789, at Besancon and at Aix, the
magistrates are hooted at, chased in the streets, besieged in the town
hall, and obliged to conceal themselves or take to flight.--If such
is the disposition in the provincial capitals, what must it be in the
capital of the kingdom? For a start, in the month of August, 1788, after
the dismissal of Brienne and Lamoignon, the mob, collected on the Place
Dauphine, constitutes itself judge, burns both ministers in effigy,
disperses the watch, and resists the troops: no sedition, as bloody as
this, had been seen for a century. Two days later, the riot bursts out
a second time; the people are seized with a resolve to go and burn the
residences of the two ministers and that of Dubois, the lieutenant of
police.--Clearly a new ferment has been infused among the ignorant and
brutal masses, and the new ideas are producing their effect. They have
for a long time imperceptibly been filtering downwards from layer
to layer After having gained over the aristocracy, the whole of the
lettered portion of the Third-Estate, the lawyers, the schools, all the
young, they have insinuated themselves drop by drop and by a thousand
fissures into the class which supports itself by the labor of its own
hands. Noblemen, at their toilettes, have scoffed at Christianity, and
affirmed the rights of man before their valets, hairdressers, purveyors,
and all those that are in attendance upon them. Men of letters, lawyers,
and attorneys have repeated, in the bitterest tone, the same diatribes
and the same theories in the coffee-houses and in the restaurants, on
the promenades and in all public places. They have spoken out before
the lower class as if it were not present, and, from all this eloquence
poured out without precaution, some bubbles besprinkle the brain of the
artisan, the publican, the messenger, the shopkeeper, and the soldier.

Hence it is that a year suffices to convert mute discontent into
political passion. From the 5th of July 1787, on the invitation of the
King, who convokes the States-General and demands advice from everybody,
both speech and the press alter in tone.[1207] Instead of general
conversation of a speculative turn there is preaching, with a view
to practical effect, sudden, radical, and close at hand, preaching as
shrill and thrilling as the blast of a trumpet. Revolutionary pamphlets