lavery and of despotism
be imagined!"--"The orator himself imitates the roar of the lion.
The listeners were all excited by it and I, who passed the barrier
Saint-Victor so often, was surprised that this horrible image had not
struck me. That very day I examined it closely and, on the pilaster, I
found only a small buckler suspended as an ornament by a little chain
attached by the sculptor to a little lion's mouth, like those we see
serving as door-knockers or as water-cocks."--Perverted sensations and
delirious conceptions of this kind would be regarded by physicians as
the symptoms of mental derangement, and we are only in the early
months of the year 1789!--In such excitable and over-excited brains the
powerful fascination of words is about to create phantoms, some of them
hideous, the aristocrat and the tyrant, and others adorable, the friend
of the people and the incorruptible patriot, so many disproportionate,
imaginary figures, but which will replace actual living persons, and
which the maniac is to overwhelm with his praise or pursue with his
fury.

VI. Summary

Thus does the philosophy of the eighteenth century descend among the
people and propagate itself. Ideas, on the first story of the house, in
handsome gilded rooms, serve only as an evening illumination, as drawing
room explosives and pleasing Bengal lights, with which people amuse
themselves, and then laughingly throw from the windows into the
street. Collected together in the story below and on the ground floor,
transported to shops, to warehouses and into business cabinets, they
find combustible material, piles of wood a long time accumulated, and
here do the flames enkindle. The conflagration seems to have already
begun, for the chimneys roar and a ruddy light gleams through the
windows; but "No," say the people above, "those below would take care
not to set the house on fire, for they live in it as we do. It is only a
straw bonfire and a burning chimney, and a little water will extinguish
it; and, besides, these little accidents clear the chimney and burn out
the soot."

Take care! Under the vast deep arches supporting it, in the cellars of
the house, there is a magazine of powder.

*****

NOTES:

[Footnote 4301: I have verified these sentiments myself, in the
narration of aged people deceased twenty years ago. Cf. manuscript
memoirs of Hardy the bookseller (analyzed by Aubertin), and the "Travels
of Arthur Young."]

[Footnote 43