Madame de Stael, Sept. 17, 1786).]

[Footnote 4335: Taine uses the French term "passe-droit", meaning both
passing over, slight, unjust promotion over the heads of others, a
special favour, or privilege. (SR.)]

[Footnote 4336: Sainte-Beuve, "Causeries du Lundi," II. 24, in the
article on Barnave.]

[Footnote 4337: Dr Tilly, "Memoires," I. 243.]

[Footnote 4338: The words of Fontanes, who knew her and admired her.
(Sainte-Beuve, "Nouveaux Lundis," VIII. 221).]

[Footnote 4339: "Memoires de Madame Roland," passim. At fourteen years
of age, on being introduced to Mme. de Boismorel, she is hurt at hearing
her grandmother addressed "Mademoiselle."--Shortly after this, she says:
"I could not concoal from myself that I was of more consequence than
Mlle. d'Hannaches, whose sixty years and her genealogy did not enable
her to write a common-sense letter or one that was legible."--About
the same epoch she passes a week at Versailles with a servant of the
Dauphine, and tells her mother, "A few days more and I shall so
detest these people that I shall not know how to suppress my hatred
of them."--"What injury have they done you?" she inquired. "It is the
feeling of injustice and the constant contemplation of absurdity!"--At
the chateau of Fontenay where she is invited to dine, she and her mother
are made to dine in the servants' room, etc.--In 1818, in a small town
in the north, the Comte de--dining with a bourgeois sub-prefect and
placed by the side of the mistress of the house, says to her, on
accepting the soup, 'Thanks, sweetheart,' But the Revolution has given
the lower class bourgeoisie the courage to defend themselves tooth
and nail so that, a moment later, she addresses him, with one of her
sweetest smiles, 'Will you take some chicken, my love?' (The French
expression 'mon coeur' means both sweetheart and my love. SR.)]

[Footnote 4340: De Vaublanc, I. 153.]

[Footnote 4341: Beugnot, "Memoires," I. 77.]

[Footnote 4342: Champfort, 16.--"Who would believe it! Not taxation,
nor lettres-de-cachet, nor the abuses of power, nor the vexations of
intendants, and the ruinous delays of justice have provoked the ire of
the nation, but their prejudices against the nobility towards which
it has shown the greatest hatred. This evidently proves that the
bourgeoisie, the men of letters, the financial class, in short all who
envy the nobles have excited against these the inferior class in the
towns and among the rural peasantry."