[History of the Girondists, Volume I by Alphonse de Lamartine]@TWC D-Link bookHistory of the Girondists, Volume I BOOK X 9/78
Oh, beware of these excessive terrors! Repulse indignantly these impostors, who, whilst they affect an hypocritical zeal for the constitution, yet unceasingly speak of the _monarchy_.
The _monarchy_ is to them the counter-revolution.
The _monarchy_ is the _nobility_; the counter-revolution--that is taxation, the feudal system, the Bastille, chains, and executions, to punish the sublime impulses of liberty. Foreign satellites in the interior of the state--bankruptcy, engulphing with your _assignats_ your private fortunes and the national wealth--the fury of fanaticism, of vengeance, murder, rapine, conflagration, despotism, and slaughter, contending, in rivers of blood and over the heaps of dead, for the mastery of your unhappy country.
Nobility; that is, two classes of men, one for greatness, the other for poverty; one for tyranny, the other for slavery.
Nobility; ah! the very word is an insult to the human race. "And yet it is to ensure the success of this conspiracy against you that all Europe is in arms .-- You must annihilate these guilty hopes by a solemn declaration.
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