This
profession might - although in fact it did not - have brought him
to consider himself at last as a man of action. He had not, however,
on that account ceased to be a man of thought, and the events of the
spring and summer months of that year 1789 in Paris provided him
with abundant matter for reflection. He read there in the raw what
is perhaps the most amazing page in the history of human development,
and in the end he was forced to the conclusion that all his early
preconceptions had been at fault, and that it was such exalted,
passionate enthusiasts as Vilmorin who had been right.
I suspect him of actually taking pride in the fact that he had been
mistaken, complacently attributing his error to the circumstance
that he had been, himself, of too sane and logical a mind to gauge
the depths of human insanity now revealed.
He watched the growth of hunger, the increasing poverty and distress
of Paris during that spring, and assigned it to its proper cause,
together with the patience with which the people bore it.
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