e knowledge;... he felt that cultivated men would never bend the
knee to him [41142]..... Instruction was paralyzed; they wanted to
burn the libraries..... Must I tell you that at the very door of your
assembly errors in orthography are seen? Nobody learns how to read or
write."--At Nantes, Carrier boasts of having "dispersed the literary
chambers," while in his enumeration of the evil-minded he adds "to
the rich and merchants," "all gens d'esprit."[41143] Sometimes on the
turnkey's register we read that such an one was confined "for being
clever and able to do mischief," another for saying "good-day,
gentlemen, to the municipal councillors."[41144]

Politeness has, like other signs of a good education, become a stigma;
good manners are considered, not only as a remnant of the ancient
regime, but as a revolt against the new institutions; now, as the
governing principle of these is, theoretically, abstract equality and,
practically, the ascendancy of the low class, one rebels against the
established order of things when one repudiates coarse companions,
familiar oaths, and the indecent expressions of the common workman and
the soldier. In sum, Jacobinism, through its doctrines and deeds, its
dungeons and executioners, proclaims to the nation over which it holds
the rod:[41145]

"Be rude, that you may become republican, return to barbarism that
you may show the superiority of your genius; abandon the customs of
civilized people that you may adopt those of galley slaves; mar your
language with a view to improve it; use that of the populace under
penalty of death. Spanish beggars treat each other in a dignified way;
they show respect for humanity although in tatters. We, on the contrary,
order you to assume our rags, our patois, our terms of intimacy. Don the
carmagnole and tremble; become rustics and dolts, and prove your civism
by the absence of all education."

This is true to the letter.

"Education,[41146]" says another contemporary, "amiable qualities,
gentle ways, a mild physiognomy, bodily graces, a cultivated mind,
all natural endowments are henceforth the inevitable causes of
proscription."

One is self-condemned if one has not converted oneself into a
sans-culotte and proletarian, in accordance with affected modes, air,
language and dress. Hence,

"through a hypocritical contest hitherto unknown men who were not
vicious deemed it necessary to appear so."

And worse still,

"one was even afraid to be on