pilot and ballast for the ship of State, Maurepas, an
"elder statesman" whose memories went back to the
early days of the last reign, when the old King was
still Louis le Bien-aimé and the old orthodoxies were
still undisturbed by Montesquieu or Beccaria, Rous-
seau or Voltaire. The crowning of Louis and Marie
Antoinette at Rheims in 1775, carried out with all
the traditional magnificence, was almost an acclama-
tion of philosophy upon the throne.

On their return from Rheims, the new sovereigns
paid the customary visit to the Collège (we should
say, School) of Louis-le-Grand in Paris, where a Latin
speech of welcome was delivered by the brightest
classical scholar of his year, a poor orphan of seven-
teen from Arras, named Maximilien de Robespierre.
They were to meet again when Louis was on his trial
before the National Convention in December 1792
and Robespierre clamoured for his death.

In the age-long constitution of French society, so
soon to be dissolved by revolution, the privileged
orders of Clergy and Nobility and the unprivileged
but financially and professionally important bour-
geoisie--corresponding to our middle classes--formed
no more than a thin crust upon the surface of the
workers: half a million privileged and a million bour-
geois, or thereabouts, to twenty-five million workers,
nine-tenths of them agricultural. But in the few great
cities ( Paris had a population of about 600,000, and
some half a dozen ports or manufacturing centres ap-
proached six figures), and in the many county towns,
as we should call them, the dignitaries of the cathe-
dral, the parish priests, the members of the Town
Council (municipalité), the magistrates, lawyers, and
solicitors, and all the minor officials of civil and

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