se seem to me, of their
kind, truly remarkable, and those in which the divinity of the day might
well incarnate himself.--Authentic and rather well kept cookbooks inform
us about the cost of the cult: We can more or less estimate how much the
sacred crocodiles consumed in ten years; we know their bills of daily
fare, their favorite morsels. Naturally, the god selected the fattest
victims, but his voracity was so great that he likewise bolted down,
and blindly, the lean ones, and in much greater number than the fattest.
Moreover, by virtue of his instincts, and an unfailing effect of the
situation, he ate his equals once or twice a year, except when they
succeeded in eating him.--This cult certainly is instructive, at least
to historians and men of pure science. If any believers in it still
remain I do not aim to convert them; one cannot argue with a devotee on
matters of faith. This volume, accordingly, like the others that have
gone before it, is written solely for amateurs of moral zoology, for
naturalists of the understanding, for seekers of truth, of texts, and
of proofs--for these alone and not for the public, whose mind is made up
and which has its own opinion on the Revolution. This opinion began to
be formed between 1825 and 1830, after the retirement or withdrawal of
eye witnesses. When they disappeared it was easy to convince a credulous
public that crocodiles were philanthropists; that many possessed
genius; that they scarcely ate others than the guilty, and that if they
sometimes ate too many it was unconsciously and in spite of themselves,
or through devotion and self-sacrifice for the common good.

H. A. Taine, Menthon Saint Bernard, July 1884.

*****

BOOK FIRST. THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT.

CHAPTER I. JACOBIN GOVERNMENT

I. The despotic creed and instincts of the Jacobin.

Weakness of former governments.--Energy of the new
government.--The despotic creed and instincts of the
Jacobin.

So far, the weakness of the legal government is extreme. During
four years, whatever its kind, it has constantly and everywhere been
disobeyed. For four years it never dared enforce obedience. Recruited
among the cultivated and refined class, the rulers of the country have
brought with them into power the prejudices and sensibilities of the
epoch. Under the influence of the prevailing dogma they have submitted
to the will of the multitude and, with too much