- It is only in the towns,
that is, in a few towns, and for a very short time, that an
inoffensive noble who is attacked obtains any aid; the phantoms
which people create for themselves there are less gross; a certain
degree of enlightenment, and a remnant of common sense, prevent the
hatching of too absurd stories. - But in the dark recesses of
rustic brains nothing can arrest the monomania of suspicion.
Fancies multiply there like weeds in a dark hole: they take root and
vegetate until they become belief, conviction, and certainty; they
produce the fruit of hostility and hatred, homicidal and incendiary
ideas. With eyes constantly fixed on the chateau, the village
regards it as a Bastille which must be captured, and, instead of
saluting the lord of the manor, it thinks only of firing at him.
Let us take up one of these local histories in detail.[11] In the
month of July, 1789, during the jacquerie in M??onnais, the parish
of Villiers appealed for assistance to its lord, M.
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