Popular delegations, cavalry pickets, and infantry patrols marched every which way in the streets. People went from the Club des Feuillants to the Club des Jacobins, from balls and gambling houses to the crowds at the Palais-Royal, from the gallery of the National Assembly to the gallery of the open air. I saw Marshal Gouvion-Saint-Cyr play a part in Beaumarchais’s La Mère coupable at the Théâtre du Marais. In every corner of Paris, there were literary gatherings, political meetings, and theater shows future celebrities wandered in the crowd unknown, like souls on the banks of the Lethe before they bask in the light. I can think of no better way to describe the society of 17 than to compare it to architecture from the days of Louis XII and François I, when the Greek orders began to be combined with the Gothic style, or, rather, by likening it to the collection of ruins and tombs of all the centuries, piled up pell-mell after the Terror in the cloisters of the Petits-Augustins-except the ruins of which I speak were alive and constantly changing.

The human race on holiday strolls down the street, rid of its masters and restored for a moment to its natural state it feels no need of a civic bridle until it shoulders the yoke of the new tyrants, which license breeds. The breaches of the law, the freedom from duties, customs, and good manners, even the dangers intensify the appeal of this disorder.

Passions and characters set at liberty are displayed with an energy unimaginable in a well-regulated city. In a society that is dissolving and recomposing itself, the struggle of two spirits, the clash of past and future, the intermingling of old ways and new, makes for a transitory concoction that leaves no time for boredom. Moments of crisis redouble the life of man. The Revolution made me understand how possible it is to live under such conditions. I was astonished that Montaigne could write so cheerfully in a castle that he could not so much as stroll around without running the risk of being abducted by bands of Leaguers or Protestants. When, before the Revolution, I read the history of public disturbances among the different nations, I could not conceive of how people had lived in such times.

François rené de chateaubriand rené