re consists of the popular
laments of Mandrin and Cartouche.

II.

Political incapacity.--Interpretation of political rumors
and of government action.

By this we can judge of their political intelligence. Every object
appears to them in a false light; they are like children who, at each
turn of the road, see in each tree or bush some frightful hobgoblin.
Arthur Young, on visiting the springs near Clermont, is arrested,[5313]
and the people want to imprison a woman, his guide, some of the
bystanders regarding him as an "agent of the Queen, who intended to blow
the town up with a mine, and send all that escaped to the galleys."
Six days after this, beyond Puy, and notwithstanding his passport, the
village guard come and take him out of bed at eleven o'clock at nights,
declaring that "I was undoubtedly a conspirator with the Queen, the
Count d'Artois and the Count d'Entragues (who has property here), who
had employed me as arpenteur to measure their fields in order to double
their taxes." We here take the unconscious, apprehensive, popular
imagination in the act; a slight indication, a word, prompting the
construction of either air castles or fantastic dungeons, and seeing
these as plainly as if they were so many substantial realities. They
have not the inward resources that render capable of separating and
discerning; their conceptions are formed in a lump; both object and
fancy appear together and are united in one single perception. At the
moment of electing deputies the report is current in Province[5314] that
"the best of kings desires perfect equality, that there are to be no
more bishops, nor seigniors, nor tithes, nor seigniorial dues, no more
tithes or distinctions, no more hunting or fishing rights,. . . that
the people are to be wholly relieved of taxation, and that the first two
orders alone are to provide the expenses of the government." Whereupon
forty or fifty riots take place in one day. "Several communities refuse
to make any payments to their treasurer outside of royal requisitions."
Others do better: "on pillaging the strong-box of the receiver of the
tax on leather at Brignolles, they shout out Vive le Roi!" "The peasant
constantly asserts his pillage and destruction to be in conformity with
the king's will." A little later, in Auvergne, the peasants who burn
castles are to display "much repugnance" in thus maltreating "such kind
seigniors," but they allege "imperative orders, having