of daily fare, their favorite morsels. Naturally, the god selected
the fattest victims, but his voracity was so great that he likewise
bolted down, and blindly, the lean ones, and in much greater number
than the fattest. Moreover, by virtue of his instincts, and an
unfailing effect of the situation, he ate his equals once or twice a
year, except when they succeeded in eating him. -- This cult
certainly is instructive, at least to historians and men of pure
science. If any believers in it still remain I do not aim to convert
them; one cannot argue with a devotee on matters of faith. This
volume, accordingly, like the others that have gone before it, is
written solely for amateurs of moral zoology, for naturalists of the
understanding, for seekers of truth, of texts, and of proofs -- for
these alone and not for the public, whose mind is made up and which
has its own opinion on the Revolution. This opinion began to be
formed between 1825 and 1830, after the retirement or withdrawal of
eye witnesses. When they disappeared it was easy to convince a
credulous public that crocodiles were philanthropists; that many
possessed genius; that they scarcely ate others than the guilty, and
that if they sometimes ate too many it was unconsciously and in spite
of themselves, or through devotion and self-sacrifice for the common
good.

H. A. Taine, Menthon Saint Bernard, July 1884.

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BOOK FIRST. THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT.

CHAPTER I.