The Assembly presents the spectacle of an inebriated crowd in a shop of valuable furniture, breaking and smashing at will whatever they can lay their hands on." "That which would have required a year of care and reflection," says a competent foreigner, "was proposed, deliberated over, and passed by general acclamation.

The abolition of feudal rights, of titles, of the privileges of the provinces, three articles which alone embraced a whole system of jurisprudence and statesmanship, were decided with ten or twelve other measures in less time than is required in the English Parliament for the first reading of an important bill." "Such are our Frenchmen," says Mirabeau again, "they spend a month in disputes about syllables, and overthrow, in a single night, the whole established system of the Monarchy!"[2110] The truth is, they display the nervousness of women, and, from one end of the Revolution to the other, this excitability keeps on increasing.
Not only are they excited, but the pitch of excitement must be maintained, and, like the drunkard who, once stimulated, has recourse again to strong waters, one would say that they carefully try to expel the last remnants of calmness and common sense from their brains.

They delight in pompous phrases, in high-sounding rhetoric, in declamatory sentimental strokes of eloquence: this is the style of nearly all their speeches, and so strong is their taste, they are not satisfied with the orations made amongst themselves.

Lally and Necker, having made "affecting and sublime" speeches at the Hotel-de-Ville, the Assembly wish them to be repeated before them:[2111] this being the heart of France, it is proper for it to answer to the noble emotions of all Frenchmen.

Let this heart throb on, and as strongly as possible, for that is its office, and day by day it receives fresh impulses.