than the beasts of the fields. It is not a pleasant picture, but it
is not exaggerated. There was, however, another side to the so-called
"Ancien Regime" which we must keep in mind.

A wealthy middle class, closely connected with the nobility (by the
usual process of the rich banker's daughter marrying the poor baron's
son) and a court composed of all the most entertaining people of
France, had brought the polite art of graceful living to its highest
development. As the best brains of the country were not allowed to
occupy themselves with questions of political economics, they spent
their idle hours upon the discussion of abstract ideas.

As fashions in modes of thought and personal behaviour are quite as
likely to run to extremes as fashion in dress, it was natural that the
most artificial society of that day should take a tremendous interest
in what they considered "the simple life." The king and the queen, the
absolute and unquestioned proprietors of this country galled France,
together with all its colonies and dependencies, went to live in funny
little country houses all dressed up as milk-maids and stable-boys and
played at being shepherds in a happy vale of ancient Hellas. Around
them, their courtiers danced attendance, their court-musicians composed
lovely minuets, their court barbers devised more and more elaborate and
costly headgear, until from sheer boredom and lack of real jobs, this
whole artificial world of Versailles (the great show place which Louis
XIV had built far away from his noisy and restless city) talked of
nothing but those subjects which were furthest removed from their own
lives, just as a man who is starving will talk of nothing except food.

When Voltaire, the courageous old philosopher, playwright, historian and
novelist, and the great enemy of all religious and political tyranny,
began to throw his bombs of criticism at everything connected with the
Established Order of Things, the whole French world applauded him and
his theatrical pieces played to standing room only. When Jean
Jacques Rousseau waxed sentimental about primitive man and gave his
contemporaries delightful descriptions of the happiness of the original
inhabitants of this planet, (about whom he knew as little as he
did about the children, upon whose education he was the recognised
authority,) all France read his "Social Contract" and this society in
which the king and the state were one, wept bitter tears when they
heard