of Fanchette, in the jestings of Figaro, in the liberties of Susanne, and reaching its climax in the precocity of Cherubino.  Add to this a continual double sense, the author hidden behind his characters, truth put into the mouth of a clown, malice enveloped in simple utterances, the master duped but saved from being ridiculous by his deportment, the valet rebellious but preserved from acrimony by his gaiety, and you can comprehend how Beaumarchais could have the ancient regime played before its head, put political and social satire on the stage, publicly attach an expression to each wrong so as to become a by-word, and ever making a loud report,[44] gather up into a few traits the entire polemics of the philosophers against the prisons of the State, against the censorship of literature, against the venality of office, against the privileges of birth, against the arbitrary power of ministers, against the incapacity of people in office, and still better, to sum up in one character every public demand, give the leading part to a commoner, bastard, bohemian and valet, who, by dint of dexterity, courage and good-humor, keeps himself up, swims with the tide, and shoots ahead in his little skiff, avoiding contact with larger craft and even supplanting his master, accompanying each pull on the oar with a shower of wit cast broadside at all his rivals.

After all, in France at least, the chief power is intellect.  Literature in the service of philosophy is all-sufficient.  The public opposes but a feeble resistance to their complicity, the mistress finding no trouble in convincing those who have already been won over by the servant

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Notes: 

[1] How right Taine was.  The 20th century should see a rebirth of violent Jacobinism in Russia, China, Cambodia, Korea, Cuba, Germany, Italy, Yugoslavia and Albania and of soft and creeping Jacobinism in the entire Western world. (Sr.)

[2].  “Who, born within the last forty years, ever read a word of Collins, and Toland, and Tindal, or of that whole race who called themselves freethinkers?” (Burke, “Reflexions on the French Revolutions,” 1790).

[3].  The “Oedipe,” by Voltaire, belongs to the year 1718, and his “Lettres sur les Anglais,” to the year 1728.  The “Lettres Persanes,” by Montesquieu, published in 1721, contain the germs of all the leading ideas of the century.

[4].  “Raison” (cult of).  Cult proposed by the Hébertists and aimed at replacing Christianity under the French Revolution.  The Cult of Reason was celebrated in the church of Notre Dame de Paris on the 10th of November 1793.  The cult disappeared with the Hébertists (March 1794) and Robespierre replaced it with the cult of the Superior Being. (Sr.)

[5].  Joseph de Maistre, Oeuvres inédites,” pp. 8, 11.

[6].  Diderot’s letters on the Blind and on the Deaf and Dumb are addressed in whole or in part to women.