Keen was the ridicule lavished on the dull pedantry which finds everything ancient necessarily sublime.
"Yet," said the graceful Marquis de -- , as the champagne danced to his glass, "more ridiculous still is the superstition that finds everything incomprehensible holy! But intelligence circulates, Condorcet; like water, it finds its level.

My hairdresser said to me this morning, 'Though I am but a poor fellow, I believe as little as the finest gentleman!'" "Unquestionably, the great Revolution draws near to its final completion,--a pas de geant, as Montesquieu said of his own immortal work." Then there rushed from all--wit and noble, courtier and republican--a confused chorus, harmonious only in its anticipation of the brilliant things to which "the great Revolution" was to give birth.

Here Condrocet is more eloquent than before.
"Il faut absolument que la Superstition et le Fanatisme fassent place a la Philosophie.

(It must necessarily happen that superstition and fanaticism give place to philosophy.) Kings persecute persons, priests opinion.

Without kings, men must be safe; and without priests, minds must be free." "Ah," murmured the marquis, "and as ce cher Diderot has so well sung,-- 'Et des boyaux du dernier pretre Serrez le cou du dernier roi.'" (And throttle the neck of the last king with the string from the bowels of the last priest.) "And then," resumed Condorcet,--"then commences the Age of Reason!--equality in instruction, equality in institutions, equality in wealth! The great impediments to knowledge are, first, the want of a common language; and next, the short duration of existence.