Strange ideas and theories were being
written and talked about. Physical science had been revolutionized.
People suddenly discovered that what they had held all their lives to be
facts were entire misconceptions of the truth. And, if they had been so
mistaken about the facts of physical science, might they not be equally
mistaken about theology, about law, about politics? Everywhere was
doubt and questioning. Revolution was in the air. It was the fashion,
and the young French officers returned from the War of Independence in
the American colonies found themselves alike the heroes of the common
people and of the fashionable world.

True to its nature, the nobility played with revolution as it had played
with everything from the beginning of time. It played with reform, with
suggestions to abandon its privileges, its titles, with the freedom of
the newly born press, with the prerogatives of the crown, with the tiers
etat, with life, liberty, and happiness. It was a dangerous game, and in
the danger lay its fascination. Society felt its foundations shake, and
the more insecure it felt itself to be the more feverish seemed its
desire to enjoy life to the dregs, to seize upon that fleet-footed
Pleasure who ever kept ahead of her pursuers. There was a constant
succession of balls, dramatic fetes, dinner-parties, of official
entertainments by the members of the diplomatic corps in this volcanic
year of 1789. The ministers of Louis's court, being at their wits' end
to know what was to be done to allay the disturbances, were of the mind
that they could and would, at least, enjoy themselves. The King having
always been at his wits' end was not conscious of being in any unusual
or dangerous position. As short-sighted mentally as he was physically,
he saw in the popular excitement of the times nothing to dread.
Conscious of his own good intentions toward his people, he saw nothing
in their ever-increasing demands but evidences of a spirit of progress
which he was the first to applaud. Unmindful of the fact that "the most
dangerous moment for a bad government is the moment when it meddles with
reform," he yielded everything. The nobles, noting with bitterness his
concessions to the tiers etat, told themselves that the King had
abandoned them; the common people, suspicious and bewildered, told
themselves that their King was but deceiving them. The King, informed of
the hostile attitude of the nobility and the ingratitude of the masse