Another thing well worthy of remark in this singular movement of the mind, was its _pace_, at first so easy and regulated, at last so headlong and impetuous. A few months’ interval marked this difference. Read what was written in the first weeks of 1788 by the keenest opponents of the old _régime_, you will be struck by the forbearance of their language: then take the publications of the most moderate reformers in the last five months of the same year, you will find them revolutionary. The Government had challenged discussion on itself: no bounds therefore would be set to the theme. The same impulse which had been given to opinions soon drove the passions of the nation with furious rapidity in the same direction. At first the commons complained that the nobility carried their rights too far. Later on, the existence of any such rights was denied. At first it was proposed to share power with the upper classes: soon all power was refused to them. The aristocracy was to become a sort of extraneous substance in the uniform texture of the nation. Some said the privileged classes were a hundred thousand, some that they were five hundred thousand. All agreed in thinking that they formed a mere handful, foreign to the rest of the nation, only to be tolerated in the interest of public tranquillity. ‘Take away in your imagination,’ said Rabaut Saint-Etienne, ‘the whole of the clergy--take away even the whole nobility, there still remains the nation.’ The commons were a complete social body: all the rest was vain superfluity: not only the nobles had no right to be masters of the rest, they had scarcely the right to be their fellow-citizens. For the first time perhaps in the history of the world, the upper classes had separated and isolated themselves to such a degree from all other classes, that their members could be counted one by one and set apart like sheep draughted from a flock: whilst the middle classes were bent on _not_ mixing with the class above them, but, on the contrary, stood carefully aloof from all contact. These two symptoms, had they been understood, would have revealed the immensity of the Revolution which was about to take place, or rather which was already made. Now follow the movement of passion in the track of opinion. At first hatred was expressed against privileges, none against persons. But by degrees the tone becomes more bitter, emulation becomes jealousy, enmity becomes detestation, a thousand conflicting associations are piled together to form the mighty mass which a thousand arms are at once to lift, and drop upon the head of the aristocracy so as to crush it.