have never worked at it.  They are entirely ignorant of the old building[21] in which they occupy the first story.  They are not qualified to calculate either its pressure or its resistance.[[22]] They conclude, finally, that it is better to let the thing tumble in, and that the restoration of the edifice in their behalf will follow its own course, and that they will return to their drawing-room, expressly rebuilt for them, and freshly gilded, to begin over again the pleasant conversation which an accident, some tumult in the street, had interrupted.[23] Clear-sighted in society, they are obtuse in politics.  They examine everything by the artificial light of candles; they are disturbed and bewildered in the powerful light of open day.  The eyelid has grown stiff through age.  The organ so long bent on the petty details of one refined life no longer takes in the popular life of the masses, and, in the new sphere into which it is suddenly plunged, its refinement becomes the source of its blindness.

Nevertheless action is necessary, for danger is seizing them by the throat.  But the danger is of an ignoble species, while their education has provided them with no arms suitable for warding it off.  They have learned how to fence, but not how to box.  They are still the sons of those at Fontenoy, who, instead of being the first to fire, courteously raised their hats and addressed their English antagonists, “No, gentlemen, fire yourselves.”  Being the slaves of good-breeding they are not free in their movements.  Numerous acts, and those the most important, those of a sudden, vigorous and rude stamp, are opposed to the respect a well-bred man entertains for others, or at least to the respect which he owes to himself.  They do not consider these allowable among themselves; they do not dream of their being allowed, and, the higher their position the more their rank fetters them.  When the royal family sets out for Varennes the accumulated delays by which they are lost are the result of etiquette.  Madame de Touzel insists on her place in the carriage to which she is entitled as governess of the Children of France.  The king, on arriving, is desirous of conferring the marshal’s baton on M. de Bouillé, and after running to and fro to obtain a baton he is obliged to borrow that of the Duc de Choiseul.  The queen cannot dispense with a traveling dressing-case and one has to be made large enough to contain every imaginable implement from a warming-pan to a silver porridge-dish, with other dishes besides; and, as if there were no shifts to be had in Brussels, there had to be a complete outfit in this line for herself and her children.[24] — A fervent devotion, even humanness, the frivolity of the small literary spirit, graceful urbanity, profound ignorance,[25] the lack or rigidity of the comprehension and determination are still greater with the princes than with the nobles. - All are impotent against the wild and roaring outbreak.  They have not the physical superiority that can master