Mademoiselle Evelyn de Monthyon and her pretty name set us thinking of Antoinette, who hardly has a name; and it seems to us that these two are the only ones who have passed before our eyes.  The difference in the earthly fates of these two creatures who have both the same fragile innocence, the same pure and complete incapacity of childhood, plunges us into a tragedy of thought.  The misery and the might which have fallen on those little immature heads are equally undeserved.  It is a disgrace for men to see a poor child; it is also a disgrace for men to see a rich child.

I feel malicious towards the little sumptuous princess who has just appeared, already haughty in spite of her littleness; and I am stirred with pity for the frail victim whom life is obliterating with all its might; and Marie, I can see, gentle Marie, has the same thoughts.  Who would not feel them in face of this twin picture of childhood which a passing chance has brought us, of this one picture torn in two?

But I resist this emotion; the understanding of things must be based, not on sentiment, but on reason.  There must be justice, not charity.  Kindness is solitary.  Compassion becomes one with him whom we pity; it allows us to fathom him, to understand him alone amongst the rest; but it blurs and befogs the laws of the whole.  I must set off with a clear idea, like the beam of a lighthouse through the deformities and temptations of night.

As I have seen equality, I am seeing inequality.  Equality in truth; inequality in fact.  We observe in man’s beginning the beginning of his hurt; the root of the error is in inheritance.

Injustice, artificial and groundless authority, royalty without reason, the fantastic freaks of fortune which suddenly put crowns on heads!  It is there, as far as the monstrous authority of the dead, that we must draw a straight line and clean the darkness away.

The transfer of the riches and authority of the dead, of whatever kind, to their descendants, is not in accord with reason and the moral law.  The laws of might and of possessions are for the living alone.  Every man must occupy in the common lot a place which he owes to his work and not to luck.

It is tradition!  But that is no reason, on the other hand.  Tradition, which is the artificial welding of the present with the mass of the past, contrives a chain between them, where there is none.  It is from tradition that all human unhappiness comes; it piles de facto, truths on to the true truth; it overrides justice; it takes all freedom away from reason and replaces it with legendary things, forbidding reason to look for what may be inside them.