twenty years, the ancient regime 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,[4336] 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 the guard, request Madame Barnave to
withdraw. She refuses, whereupon the governor orders four fusiliers to
force her out. The audience in the stalls had already taken the matter
up, and violence was feared, when M. Barnave, advised of the affront,
entered and led his wife away, exclaiming aloud, "I leave by order of
the governor." The indignant public, all the bourgeoisie, agreed among
themselves not to enter the theater again without an apology being
made; the theater, in fact, remaining empty several months, until Madame
Barnave consented to reappear there. This outrage afterwards recurred to
the future deputy, and he then swore "to elevate the caste to which he
belonged out of the humiliation to which it seemed condemned." In like
manner Lacroix, the future member of the Convention,[4337] on leaving
a theater, and jostled by a gentleman who was giving his arm to a lady,
utters a loud complaint. "Who are you?" says the person. Still
the provincial, he is simple enough to give his name, surname, and
qualifications in full. "Very well," says the other man, "good for
you--I am the Comte de Chabannes, and I am in a hurry," saying which,
"laughing heartily," he jumps into his vehicle. "Ah, sir, exclaimed
Lacroix, still much excited by his misadventure, "pride and prejudice
establish an awful gulf between man and man!" We may rest assured that,
with Marat, a veterinary surgeon in the Comte d'Artois's stables,
with Robespierre, a protege of the bishop of Arras, with Danton, an
insignificant lawyer in Mery-sur-Seine, and with many others beside,
self-esteem, in frequent encounters, bled in the same fashion. The
concentrated bitterness with which Madame Roland's memoirs are imbued
has no other cause. "She could not forgive society[4338] for the
inferior position she had so long occupied in it."[4339] Thanks to
Rousseau, vanity, so natural to man, and especially sensitive with a
Frenchman, becomes still more sensitive. The slightest discrimination, a
tone of the voice, seems a mark of disdain. "On