in nature." He cites a great many facts in proof
of this, and testifies in all classes to a prompt and social nature, a
natural benevolence or habitual civility which leads them instinctively,
and not unfrequently impertinently, into acts of kindness and
consideration."--The same impression is produced on comparing the
engravings, fashion-plates, light subjects and caricatures of this
period with those of the present epoch. The malicious sentiment begins
only with Beranger; and yet his early pieces ("Le Roi d'Yvetot," "le
Senateur") display the light air, accent and happy, instead of venomous,
malice of the old song. Nobody now sings in the lower bourgeoisie or in
gatherings of clerks or students, while, along with the song, we
have seen the other traits which impressed foreigners disappear, the
gallantry, the jesting humor, the determination to regard life as so
many hours (une serie de quarts d'heures, each of which may be separated
from the others, be ample in themselves and agreeable to him who talks
and to him or her who listens.]

[Footnote 3316: Read the novels of Pigault-Lebrun: books of the epoch
the best adapted to the men of the epoch, to the military parvenus,
swift, frank, lusty and narrow-minded.]

[Footnote 3317: Candide (Recit de la Vieille).]

[Footnote 3318: "Souvenirs", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc),
chancelier de France, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893. "I am sure that his
imagination was more taken with Ghengis-Khan than with Caesar."]

[Footnote 3319: "The Revolution," II., 12, 22. (Laff. I. pp. 574, 582.)
(Articles by Mailet-Dupan, "Mercure de France," Dec. 30, 1791, and
April 7, 1792.)--Napoleon, "Memorial" (Sept. 3, 1816), thinks so too and
states the essential characteristic of the Revolution. This consisted
in "telling everybody who held office, every one who had a place or a
fortune: 'Get out.'"]

[Footnote 3320: Roederer, III., 534 (January 1809, on Normandy),
"Children in every situation think of becoming soldiers to get the cross
(legion of honor), and the cross secures the chevalier. The desire
of distinction, of passing ahead of some one else, is a national
sentiment."]

[Footnote 3321: "The Revolution," II., 248. (Laff. I. p. 747.)]

[Footnote 3322: Napoleon, "Memoires "(edited by M. de Montholon, III.,
11-19), on the extraordinary ignorance of Cartaux.--Ibid., 23, on
Doppet's incapacity, the successor of Cartaux.]

[Footnote 3323: "The Revolution," III., 310. (Laff. II. pp. 178