and the literature of
the resuscitated Greek and Roman antiquity, the dogmas of equality and
liberty infiltrate and penetrate the class able to read[4331]. "A few
days ago," says Metra,[4332] "a dinner of forty ecclesiastics from the
country took place at the house of curate of Orangis, five leagues from
Paris. At the dessert, and in the truth which came out over their
wine, they all admitted that they came to Paris to see the 'Marriage of
Figaro.'. . Up to the present time it seems as if comic authors intended
to make sport for the great at the expense of the little, but here, on
the contrary, it is the little who laugh at the expense of the great."
Hence the success of the piece.--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[4333] The spirit is that of Rousseau,
"the republican spirit;"[4334] 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 freedom, 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[4335]. 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