perpetual, where, from the floor-scrubber to the dramatist, from the
academician to the simpleton who gets muddled over the evening
newspaper, from the witty courtier down to his philosophic lackey,
each one revises Montesquieu with the self-sufficiency of a child
which, because it is learning to read, deems itself wise; where self-
esteem, in disputation, caviling and sophistication, destroys all
sensible conversation; where no one utters a word, but to teach, never
imagining that to learn one must keep quiet; where the triumphs of a
few lunatics entice every crackbrain from his den; where, with two
nonsensical ideas put together out of a book that is not understood, a
man assumes to have principles; where swindlers talk about morality,
women of easy virtue about civism, and the most infamous of beings
about the dignity of the species; where the discharged valet of a
grand seignior calls himself Brutus!"

- In reality, he is Brutus in his own eyes. Let the time come and he
will be so in earnest, especially against his late master; all he has
to do is to give him a thrust with his pike. Until he acts out the
part he spouts it, and grows excited over his own tirades; his common
sense gives way to the bombastic jargon of the revolution and to
declamation, which completes the Utopian performance and eases his
brain of its last modicum of ballast.

It is not merely ideas which the new regime has disturbed, but it has
also disordered sentiments. "Authority is transferred from the
Château of Versailles and the courtier's antechamber, with no
intermediary or counterpoise, to the proletariat and its
flatterers."[14] The whole of the staff of the old government is
brusquely set aside, while a general election has brusquely installed
another in is place, offices not being given to capacity, seniority,