Count Segur, a peer of France, in his Memoirs, has very frankly described the feelings with which he and the young nobles who were his companions regarded the writings of the philosophers:
"We felt disposed to adopt with enthusiasm the philosophical doctrines professed by literary men, remarkable for their boldness and their wit. Voltaire seduced our imagination. Rousseau touched our hearts. We felt a secret pleasure in seeing that their attacks were directed against an old fabric which presented to us a Gothic and ridiculous appearance. We were pleased with this petty war, although it was undermining our own ranks and privileges and the remains of our ancient power. But we felt not these attacks personally. It was, as yet, but a war of words and paper, which did not appear to us to threaten the superiority of existence which we enjoyed, consolidated as we thought it by a possession of many centuries."
[30] History of the Revolution of France, by M. Rabaud de St. Etienne.
[31] For appalling proof of the sufferings of the tax-payers, turn to the pages of Michelet, of De Tocqueville, of any writer upon the Old Régime.
[32] Arthur Young, vol. i., p. 574; Marshall's Travels, vol. iv., p. 322.
[33] "Care must be taken not to misunderstand the gayety which the French have often exhibited in the greatest affliction. It is a mere attempt to divert the mind from the contemplation of misfortune which seems inevitable."—The Old Régime, by De Tocqueville, p. 167.
[34] Life of Jefferson, by Henry T. Randall, vol. i., p. 432.