to be admitted into the society and family of M. de Malesherbes, and lastly, to approach a most amiable queen and a most upright king, without believing ourselves about to enter upon a kind of golden era of which preceding centuries afforded no idea. . . .  We were bewildered by the prismatic hues of fresh ideas and doctrines, radiant with hopes, ardently aglow for every sort of reputation, enthusiastic for all talents and beguiled by every seductive dream of a philosophy that was about to secure the happiness of the human species.  Far from foreseeing misfortune, excess, crime, the overthrow of thrones and of principles, the future disclosed to us only the benefits which humanity was to derive from the sovereignty of Reason.  Freedom of the press and circulation was given to every reformative writing, to every project of innovation, to the most liberal ideas and to the boldest of systems.  Everybody thought himself on the road to perfection without being under any embarrassment or fearing any kind of obstacle.  We were proud of being Frenchmen and, yet again, Frenchmen of the eighteenth century. . . .  Never was a more terrible awakening preceded by a sweeter slumber or by more seductive dreams.”

They do not content themselves with dreams, with pure desires, with passive aspirations.  They are active, and truly generous; a worthy cause suffices to secure their devotion.  On the news of the American rebellion, the Marquis de Lafayette, leaving his young wife pregnant, escapes, braves the orders of the court, purchases a frigate, crosses the ocean and fights by the side of Washington.  “The moment the quarrel was made known to me,” he says, “my heart was enlisted in it, and my only thought was to rejoin my regiment.”  Numbers of gentlemen follow in his footsteps.  They undoubtedly love danger; “the chance of being shot is too precious to be neglected."[51] But the main thing is to emancipate the oppressed; “we showed ourselves philosophers by becoming paladins,"[52] the chivalric sentiment enlisting in the service of liberty.  Other services besides these, more sedentary and less brilliant, find no fewer zealots.  The chief personages of the provinces in the provincial assemblies,[53] the bishops, archbishops, abbés, dukes, counts, and marquises, with the wealthiest and best informed of the notables in the Third-Estate, in all about a thousand persons, in short the social elect, the entire upper class convoked by the king, organize the budget, defend the tax-payer against the fiscal authorities, arrange the land-registry, equalize the taille, provide a substitute for the corvée, provide public roads, multiply charitable asylums, educate agriculturists, proposing, encouraging and directing every species of reformatory movement.  I have read through the twenty volumes of their procès-verbaux:  no better citizens, no more conscientious men, no more devoted administrators can be found, none gratuitously