It was to the effect that the growth of all dangerous movements had been watched for years, often for decades, without the logical inferences ever having been drawn from them. What history had taught him was surprise, a tremendous surprise that each time those in jeopardy had been so slow in thinking about their safety. Why, in the devil’s name, had so many French aristocrats been so asinine as to be caught in the Revolution, whereas any schoolboy nowadays knows that the writings of Rousseau and Voltaire, decades earlier, had indicated precisely what would happen?
