ought to be verified. - The footnotes at the bottom of the pages
indicate the condition, office, name, and address of those decisive
witnesses. For greater certainty I have transcribed as often as
possible their own words. In this way the reader, confronting the
texts, can interpret them for himself, and form his own opinions; he
will have the same documents as myself for arriving at his
conclusions, and, if he is pleased to do so, he may conclude
otherwise. As for allusions, if he finds any, he himself will have
introduced them, and if he applies them he is alone responsible for
them. To my mind, the past has features of its own, and the
portrait here presented resembles only the France of the past. I
have drawn it without concerning myself with the discussions of the
day; I have written as if my subject were the revolutions of
Florence or Athens. This is history, and nothing more, and, if I
may fully express myself, I esteem my vocation of historian too
highly to make a cloak of it for the concealment of another.
(December 1877).

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BOOK FIRST. SPONTANEOUS ANARCHY.

CHAPTER I. THE BEGINNINGS OF ANARCHY.

I.

Dearth the first cause. - Bad crops. The winter of 1788 and 1789.
- High price and poor quality of bread. - In the provinces. - At
Paris.