This volume, accordingly, like the others that have gone before it, is written solely for amateurs of moral zoology, for naturalists of the understanding, for seekers of truth, of texts, and of proofs--for these alone and not for the public, whose mind is made up and which has its own opinion on the Revolution.

This opinion began to be formed between 1825 and 1830, after the retirement or withdrawal of eye witnesses.

When they disappeared it was easy to convince a credulous public that crocodiles were philanthropists; that many possessed genius; that they scarcely ate others than the guilty, and that if they sometimes ate too many it was unconsciously and in spite of themselves, or through devotion and self-sacrifice for the common good.
H.A.Taine, Menthon Saint Bernard, July 1884.
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