"Here," writes the Troyes agent,[131] "public spirit not only needs to
be revived, but it needs to be re-created. Scarcely one-fifth of the
citizens side with the government, and this fifth is hated and
despised by the majority. . . . Who attend upon and celebrate the
national f?tes? Public functionaries whom the law summons to them, and
many of these f?tes often dispense with them. It is the same public
spirit which does not allow honest folks to take part in them and in
the addresses made at them, and which keeps those women away who ought
to be their principal ornament. . . . The same public spirit looks
only with indifference and contempt on the republican, heroic actions
given on the stage, and welcomes with transport all that bears any
allusion to royalty and the ancient r?gime. The parvenus themselves
of the Revolution, the generals, the deputies, dislike Jacobin
institutions;[132] they place children in the chapel schools and send
them to the confessional, while the deputies who, in '92 and '93,
showed the most animosity to priests, do not consider their daughter
well brought up unless she has made her first communion. " -
The little are still more hostile than the great.
Pages:
998
999
1000
1001
1002
1003
1004
1005
1006
1007
1008
1009
1010
1011
1012
1013
1014
1015
1016
1017
1018
1019
1020
1021
1022