I must add that I was still infatuated with my illusions; now that I no longer had my woods, I had discovered a new solitude in remote times instead of places. In old Paris, in the enclosures of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, in the cloisters of the convents, in the vaults of Saint-Denis, in the Sainte Chapelle, in Notre Dame, in the little streets of the Cité, at the modest door of Héloïse, I again met my enchantress; but beneath the Gothic arches and among the tombs she had assumed a deathlike aspect: she was pale, she looked at me with sad eyes; she was but the shadow or the manes of the dream which I had loved. * My political education commenced with my different visits to Brittany in 1787 and 1788. The Provincial States furnished the model of the States-General; also the local troubles which heralded those of the nation broke out in two districts possessing States, Brittany and Dauphiné. The transformation that had been developing for two centuries was nearing its termination. France had passed from feudal monarchy to the monarchy of States-General, from the monarchy of States-General to the monarchy of parliaments, from the monarchy of parliaments to absolute monarchy, and was now tending towards representative monarchy, across the struggle between the magistracy and the royal power. The Maupeou Parliament[270], the establishment of provincial assemblies, coupled with individual voting-power, the first and second Assemblies of Notables, the Plenary Court, the formation of grand bailiwicks, the reinstatement of the Protestants in their civil rights, the partial abolition of torture and of forced labour, the equal division of taxation were so many successive proofs of the revolution which was at work. But at that time these facts were not seen as a whole: each event appeared in the light of an isolated accident. At every period of history, there exists a guiding thought. Looking only at one point, one fails to see the rays converging at the centre of all the other points; one does not go back as far as the secret agency which gives life and movement to the whole, like water and fire in machinery: that is why, at the outset of revolutions, so many people believe that it is enough to break this wheel or that to prevent the torrent from rushing or the steam from exploding. The eighteenth century, a century of intellectual action, not of material action, would not have succeeded in so promptly altering the laws, had it not found its vehicle: the parliaments, and notably the Parliament of Paris, became the instruments of the philosophical system. Every opinion dies an impotent or distracted death, if it be not lodged in an assembly which turns it into a power, supplies it with a will, furnishes it with a tongue and a pair of arms. Revolutions succeed, and always will succeed, only by means of corporate assemblies, lawful or unlawful.