Rousseau was a demigod at whose shrine worshiped alike duchess and
peasant. The Encyclopedists stimulated the ferment by their literary
enthusiasm, and the heartiness with which they cooperated with the whole
current of revolutionary thought.

The very atmosphere was reeking with the prophecy of imminent
change. Versailles itself did not escape the contagion. Courtiers
and aristocrats, in worshiping the beautiful ideals set up by the new
school, which were as far removed as possible from their own effete
civilization, did not realize that they were playing with the fire which
was to burn out the whole social edifice of France with such a terrible
conflagration; for, back and beneath all this, there was a people
groaning under long centuries of accumulated wrong, in whose imbruted
hearts the theories applauded by their oppressors with a sort of
_doctrinaire_ delight were working with a fatal fever.


III.

In this strange condition of affairs Gluck found his new sphere of
labor--Gluck, himself overflowing with the revolutionary spirit, full
of the enthusiasm of reform. At first he carried everything before him.
Protected by royalty, he produced, on the basis of an admirable libretto
by Du Rollet, one of the great wits of the time, "Iphigenia in Aulis."
It was enthusiastically received. The critics, delighted to establish
the reputation of one especially favored by the Dau-phiness Marie
Antoinette, exhausted superlatives on the new opera. The Abbé Arnaud,
one of the leading _dilettanti_, exclaimed: "With such music one might
found a new religion!" To be sure, the connoisseurs could not
understand the complexities of the music; but, following the rule of all