Camille Desmoulins and His Wife - Passages From the History of the Dantonists #220667

This history may then be read with confidence. In it will be found nothing insincere, nothing which is not borne out by facts, based upon a document, or proved by some written evidence, whether already known, or published for the first time in this volume. Our era is that of exactness and of patience in the matter of historic research. It does not boast the lofty flights of genius, but it has at least the virtue of respect for truth; which is, perhaps, the most praiseworthy of virtues, for, to our mind, it leads to all the others. It was no easy task for the author to make up his mind to close this work, which was the joy and the hope of his youth. What bright and happy dreams he had dreamed over it! With what intense pleasure he had turned over the faded yellow papers of the Archives! With what emotion he had opened the records of the revolutionary tribunals! With what pain he had watched the falling, one by one, of so many noble and intellectual heads! How he had rejoiced to find in those faded pages the memory and the echo of many glorious days! When the following chapters shall be read, a gloomy contrast must necessarily be drawn between that past and the present, or rather, between the past of eighty years ago and the past of yesterday. How great F — rance then was, soaring above the world.