These sentiments might be sincere; one sole passion paramount to other passions pervaded all classes, namely, a spirit of resistance to the Government as the common enemy, a spirit of opposition throughout, in small as well as in great affairs, which struck at everything, and assumed all shapes, even those which disfigured it. Some, in order to resist the Government, laid stress on what remained of old local franchises. Here a man stood up for some old privilege of his class, some secular right of his calling or his corporation; there, another man, forgetting his grievances and animosity against the privileged classes, denounced an edict which, he said, would reduce to nothing the seignorial jurisdictions, and would thus _strip the nobles of all the dignity of their fiefs_. In this violent struggle every man grasped, as if by chance, the weapon nearest at hand, even when it was the least suited to him. If one took note of all the privileges, all the exclusive rights, all the old municipal and provincial franchises which were at this epoch claimed, asserted, and loudly demanded, the picture would be at once very exact and very deceptive; it would appear as if the object of the impending Revolution was not to destroy, but to restore, the old order of society. So difficult is it for the individuals who are carried along by one of the great movements of human society to distinguish the true motive power amongst the causes by which they are themselves impelled. Who would have imagined that the impulse which caused so many traditional rights to be asserted was the very passion which was leading irresistibly to their entire abolition?[120] Now let us close our ears for a moment to these tumultuous sounds, proceeding from the middle and upper classes of the nation, to catch, if we may, some whisper beginning to make itself heard from the midst of the People. No sign that I can discover from this distance of time announced that the rural population was at all agitated. The peasant plodded onwards in his wonted track. That vast section of the nation was still neutral, and, as it were, unseen.[121] Even in the towns the people remained a stranger to the excitement of the upper classes, and indifferent to the stir which was going on above its head. They listen; they watch, with some surprise, but with more curiosity than anger. But no sooner did the agitation make itself felt among them than it was found to have assumed a new character. When the magistrates re-entered Paris in triumph, the people, which had done nothing to defend these members of Parliament, arrested in their places, gathered together tumultuously to hail their return.