told that marriage is conventional and a thing
of prejudice. Saint--Lambert obtains their applause at supper when,
raising a glass of champagne, he proposes as a toast a return to
nature and the customs of Tahiti[4213]. The last fetter of all is the
government, the most galling, for it enforces the rest and keeps man
down with its weight, along with the added weight of the others. It is
absolute, it is centralized, it works through favorites, it is backward,
it makes mistakes, it has reverses: how many causes of discontent
embraced in a few words! It is opposed by the vague and suppressed
resentment of the former powers which it has dispossessed, the
provincial assemblies, the parliaments, the grandees of the provinces,
the old stock of nobles, who, like the Mirabeau, retain the old
feudal spirit, and like Chateaubriand's father, call the Abbe Raynal
a "master-man." Against it is the spite of all those who imagine
themselves frustrated in the distribution of offices and of favors, not
only the provincial nobility who remain outside[4214] while the court
nobility are feasting at the royal banquet, but again the majority
of the courtiers who are obliged to be content with crumbs, while the
little circle of intimate favorites swallow down the large morsels. It
has against it the ill-humor of those under its direction who, seeing
it play the part of Providence and providing for all, accuses it
of everything, the high price of bread as well as of the decay of a
highway. It has against it the new humanity which, in the most elegant
drawing-rooms, lays to its charge the maintenance of the antiquated
remains of a barbarous epoch, ill-imposed, ill-apportioned and
ill-collected taxes, sanguinary laws, blind prosecutions, atrocious
punishments, the persecution of the Protestants, lettres-de-cachet, and
prisons of State. And I do not include its excesses, its scandals, its
disasters and its disgraces,--Rosbach, the treaty of Paris, Madame du
Barry, and bankruptcy.--Disgust intervenes, for everything is decidedly
bad. The spectators of the play say to each other that not only is
the piece itself poor, but the theater is badly built, uncomfortable,
stifling and contracted, to such a degree that, to be at one's ease, the
whole thing must be torn down and rebuilt from cellar to garret.

Just at this moment the new architects appear, with their specious
arguments and their ready-made plans, proving that every great public
structure, rel