the compilation of Raynal, the comedies of Beaumarchais and even the “Young Anarcharsis” and the literature of the resuscitated Greek and Roman antiquity, the dogmas of equality and liberty infiltrate and penetrate the class able to read[31].  “A few days ago,” says Métra,[32] “a dinner of forty ecclesiastics from the country took place at the house of curate of Orangis, five leagues from Paris.  At the dessert, and in the truth which came out over their wine, they all admitted that they came to Paris to see the ‘Marriage of Figaro.’ . .  Up to the present time it seems as if comic authors intended to make sport for the great at the expense of the little, but here, on the contrary, it is the little who laugh at the expense of the great.”  Hence the success of the piece.  —­ Hence a steward of a chateau has found a Raynal in the library, the furious declamation of which so delights him that he can repeat it thirty years later without stumbling, or a sergeant in the French guards embroiders waistcoats during the night to earn the money with which to purchase the latest books. —­ After the gallant picture of the boudoir comes the austere and patriotic picture; “Belisarious” and the “Horatii” of David reflect the new attitude both of the public and of the studios[33] The spirit is that of Rousseau, “the republican spirit;"[34] the entire middle class, artists, employees, curates, physicians, attorneys, advocates, the lettered and the journalists, all are won over to it; and it is fed by the worst as well as the best passions, ambition, envy, desire for freedom, zeal for the public welfare and the consciousness of right.

   V. Revolutionary passions.

Its effects therein. — The formation of revolutionary passions. - Leveling instincts. — The craving for dominion. — The Third-Estate decides and constitutes the nation. — Chimeras, ignorance, exaltation.

All these passions intensify each other.  There is nothing like a wrong to quicken the sentiment of justice.  There is nothing like the sentiment of justice to quicken the injury proceeding from a wrong[35].  The Third-Estate, considering itself deprived of the place to which it is entitled, finds itself uncomfortable in the place it occupies and, accordingly, suffers through a thousand petty grievances it would not, formerly, have noticed.  On discovering that he is a citizen a man is irritated at being treated as a subject, no one accepting an inferior position alongside of one of whom he believes himself the equal.  Hence, during a period of twenty years, the ancient régime while attempting to grow easier, appear to be still more burdensome, and its pinpricks exasperate as if they were so many wounds.  Countless instances might be quoted instead of one. —­ At the theater in Grenoble, Barnave,[36] a child, is with his mother in a box which the Duc de Tonnerre, governor of the province, had assigned to one of his satellites.  The manager of the theater, and next an officer of