VI.  Summary

Thus does the philosophy of the eighteenth century descend among the people and propagate itself.  Ideas, on the first story of the house, in handsome gilded rooms, serve only as an evening illumination, as drawing room explosives and pleasing Bengal lights, with which people amuse themselves, and then laughingly throw from the windows into the street.  Collected together in the story below and on the ground floor, transported to shops, to warehouses and into business cabinets, they find combustible material, piles of wood a long time accumulated, and here do the flames enkindle.  The conflagration seems to have already begun, for the chimneys roar and a ruddy light gleams through the windows; but “No,” say the people above, “those below would take care not to set the house on fire, for they live in it as we do.  It is only a straw bonfire and a burning chimney, and a little water will extinguish it; and, besides, these little accidents clear the chimney and burn out the soot.”

Take care!  Under the vast deep arches supporting it, in the cellars of the house, there is a magazine of powder.

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Notes: 

[1] I have verified these sentiments myself, in the narration of aged people deceased twenty years ago.  Cf. manuscript memoirs of Hardy the bookseller (analyzed by Aubertin), and the “Travels of Arthur Young.”

[2] Aubertin, ibid., 180, 362.

[3] Voltaire, “Siècle de Louis XV,” ch.  XXXI; “Siècle de Louis XIV,” ch.  XXX.  “Industry increases every day.  To see the private display, the prodigious number of pleasant dwellings erected in Paris and in the provinces, the numerous equipages, the conveniences, the acquisitions comprehended in the term luxe, one might suppose that opulence was twenty times greater than it formerly was.  All this is the result of ingenuity, much more than of wealth. . .  The middle class has become wealthy by industry. . . .  Commercial gains have augmented.  The opulence of the great is less than it was formerly and much larger among the middle class, the distance between men even being lessened by it.  Formerly the inferior class had no resource but to serve their superiors; nowadays industry has opened up a thousand roads unknown a hundred years ago.”

[4] John Law (Edinbourgh 1672- dead in Venice 1729) Scotch financier, who founded a bank in Paris issuing paper money whose value depended upon confidence and credit.  He had to flee France when his system collapsed and died in misery. (Sr.)

[5] Arthur Young, II. 360, 373.

[6] De Tocqueville, 255.

[7] Aubertin, 482.

[8] Roux and Buchez, “Histoire parlementaire.”  Extracted from the accounts made up by the comptrollers-general, I. 175, 205. — The report by Necker, I. 376.  To the 206,000,000 must be added 15,800,000 for expenses and interest on advances.