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Taine, Hippolyte, 1828-1893

"The French Revolution - Volume 3"

"[158] The reader may there see, if he pleases, a man of
genius delivered up to brutes, coarse, angry, despotic animals, who
listen to nothing, who comprehend nothing, who do not even understand
terms in common use, who stumble through their queries, and who, to
ape intelligence, draggle their pens along in supreme stupidity.
The overthrow is complete. France, subject to the Revolutionary
Government, resembles a human being forced to walk with his head down
and to think with his feet.
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Notes:

[1] Cf. "The Revolution," book I., ch. 3, and book III., chs. 9 and
10.
[2] Gr?goire, " Memoires," II., 172. "About eighteen thousand
ecclesiastics are enumerated among the ?migr?s of the first epoch.
About eighteen thousand more took themselves off, or were sent off,
after the 2nd of September."
[3] Ibid., 26. "The chief of the ?migr? bureau in the police
department (May 9, 1805) enumerates about two hundred thousand persons
reached, or affected, by the laws concerning emigration." - Lally-
Tolendal, "D?fense des Emigr?s," (2nd part, p. 62 and passim).
Several thousand persons inscribed as ?migr?s did not leave France.


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