urient
corruption lies visible in that super-sublime of modesty! Yet, on the
whole, our good Saint-Pierre is musical, poetical though most morbid: we
will call his Book the swan-song of old dying France.

Louvet's again, let no man account musical. Truly, if this wretched
Faublas is a death-speech, it is one under the gallows, and by a felon
that does not repent. Wretched cloaca of a Book; without depth even as
a cloaca! What 'picture of French society' is here? Picture properly of
nothing, if not of the mind that gave it out as some sort of picture.
Yet symptom of much; above all, of the world that could nourish itself
thereon.

BOOK 1.III.

THE PARLEMENT OF PARIS

Chapter 1.3.I.

Dishonoured Bills.

While the unspeakable confusion is everywhere weltering within, and
through so many cracks in the surface sulphur-smoke is issuing, the
question arises: Through what crevice will the main Explosion carry
itself? Through which of the old craters or chimneys; or must it, at
once, form a new crater for itself? In every Society are such chimneys,
are Institutions serving as such: even Constantinople is not without its
safety-valves; there too Discontent can vent itself,--in material fire;
by the number of nocturnal conflagrations, or of hanged bakers, the
Reigning Power can read the signs of the times, and change course
according to these.

We may say that this French Explosion will doubtless first try all the
old Institutions of escape; for by each of these there is, or at least
there used to be, some communication with the interior deep; they are
national Institutions in virtue of that. Had they even become personal
Institutions, and what we can call choked up from their original uses,
there nevertheless must the impediment be weaker than elsewhere. Through
which of them then? An observer might have guessed: Through the Law
Parlements; above all, through the Parlement of Paris.

Men, though never so thickly clad in dignities, sit not inaccessible to
the influences of their time; especially men whose life is business;
who at all turns, were it even from behind judgment-seats, have come
in contact with the actual workings of the world. The Counsellor of
Parlement, the President himself, who has bought his place with hard
money that he might be looked up to by his fellow-creatures, how shall
he, in all Philosophe-soirees, and saloons of elegant culture, become
notable as a Friend of Darkness? Among the Paris