sphinx's head, mutton-chop whiskers, and one of those padded bonnets
which babies wore to keep them from bashing their little brains out when
they took a tumble.

Of course exactitude was impossible. Why should he dream of getting at
the whole truth about the Middle Ages when nobody had been able to give
a full account of the Revolution, of the Commune for that matter? The
best he could do was to imagine himself in the midst of creatures of
that other epoch, wearing their antique garb, thinking their thoughts,
and then, having saturated himself with their spirit, to convey his
illusion by means of adroitly selected details.

That is practically what Michelet did, and though the garrulous old
gossip drivelled endlessly about matters of supreme unimportance and
ecstasized in his mild way over trivial anecdotes which he expanded
beyond all proportion, and though his sentimentality and chauvinism
sometimes discredited his quite plausible conjectures, he was
nevertheless the only French historian who had overcome the limitation
of time and made another age live anew before our eyes.

Hysterical, garrulous, manneristic as he was, there was yet a truly epic
sweep in certain passages of his History of France. The personages were
raised from the oblivion into which the dry-as-dust professors had sunk
them, and became live human beings. What matter, then, if Michelet was
the least trustworthy of historians since he was the most personal and
the most evocative?

As for the others, they simply ferreted around among the old state
papers, clipped them, and, following M. Taine's example, arranged,
ticketed, and mounted their sensational gleanings in logical sequence,