“Why does he make that abominable noise?” asks the nobleman. “Pardon me, Monsieur le Marquis, it was his child,” explains one of the crowd humbly. “Killed!” screams the father, lifting and extending his arms. “Dead!” he cries. The Marquis runs his eye over all the rabble, as though they were so many rats come out of their holes. He draws out his purse. “I do not see why it is that you people won’t take care of yourselves and children? One or the other of you are always in the way. HOW DO I KNOW THAT YOU HAVE NOT INJURED ONE OF MY HORSES?” With this he throws a gold coin on the ground beside the father of the child. The crazed parent continues to scream: “Dead! Dead!” As the Marquis is driving away, the gold coin which he had thrown to the ground is flung back into the carriage, and falls rattling at his feet. “Hold!” says the Marquis. “Hold the horses! Who threw that coin?” The crowd makes no answer. No blouse-clad man dare look him in the eye. “You dogs!” says the Marquis smoothly; “I would ride over any of you very willingly and exterminate you from the earth. If I knew who it was that threw that coin I would have the brigand crushed under the wheels.” So cowed were they, so long and hard had been their experience of what such a man could do to them, that not a voice or a hand or an eye was raised. Such was the condition of the French before the great Revolution of 1789; and while the picture is drawn by a novelist, it is the picture of a novelist who painted human life and human conditions as they were never painted before. His pictures were photographs. In another book, not a novel but a history, (the title and the author of which shall not be mentioned here), there is another description of human relations under the _Ancien Régime_, and that description claims to be literally true. I quote the author’s own words: “Was it not in this same year, 1788, that the Duke of Béthune’s carriage, dashing through the narrow streets, as was the aristocratic custom, ran over a little girl in the rue de la Ferronnerie and killed her? “Did not the mother see it all? Did not she rush wildly to the scene, snatch up the poor crushed form, gaze distractedly into the eyes for light _and see none_, lay her cheek to that of the child to feel the warmth of life _and feel none_? “Still was the little heart, gone the breath, blanched the cheeks, frozen the tiny hands. “What sound does the ear ever hear like that of the voice that was heard of old in Ramah? “Shriek after shriek split the air, piercing every heart in the crowd that gathered as the frantic mother, holding her dead child in her arms, gave voice to her grief. “_And the Duke, what said he?_ ‘LET THE WOMAN COME TO MY HOUSE, AND SHE SHALL BE PAID FOR HER LOSS.’ “He had not even left the carriage; _he had not spoken a word of sympathy or regret_. “In his view of the case he had done some damage to this woman, and, being a man of honor, he was ready to settle the bill.