This book is not a history of the French Revolution, which has been recounted too brilliantly for me to contemplate doing it again. It is rather a study of that Revolution.

In 1789 the French tried harder than any other people has ever done to sever their past from their future, as it were, and hollow out an abyss between what they had been and what they wished to become. To that end, they took any number of precautions to ensure that they would carry over nothing from the past into their new condition. They imposed all sorts of constraints on themselves so that, in fashioning the people they were to be in the future, they would not resemble their fathers. They spared no effort to make themselves unrecognizable.

In this singular enterprise I have always thought that they were far less successful than people outside France generally believe and then the French themselves believed initially. I was convinced that, unbeknownst（对……不知晓） to themselves, they had taken from the Ancient Regime most of the feelings, habits, and ideas that guided the Revolution which destroyed it, and that, without intending to, they had built the new society out of the debris of the old. Hence, in order to understand the Revolution and its achievements properly, we must temporarily avert our eyes from the France that exists today and begin our investigation at the tomb of the France that is no more. That is what I have tried to do here, but the task has proved more difficult than I could have imagined.

The early centuries of the monarchy, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance have been extensively researched and have given rise to weighty tomes （卷， 册）from which we can learn not only what happened in these different periods of history but also what laws and customs prevailed and what spirit animated the government and nation. Until now,however, no one has delved as deeply into the eighteenth century. We think we know the French society of that era quite well because we are familiar with its glittering surface and, in minute detail, with the lives of its most famous personages, and because we have read clever and eloquent critiques of the works of its great writers. But so for the way in which public business was conducted, how institutions actually worked, how the various classes truly related to one another, the condition and feelings of those segments of the population that still could be neither seen nor heard, and the true basis of opinions and customs, we have only ideas that are at best confused and often misleading.

I have tried to strike to the heart of this Ancient Regime, so close to us in years yet hidden from us by the Revolution.

To that end, I have read more than just the celebrated works of the eighteenth century. I also sought to study many works that, while deservedly less well known, are perhaps more revealing of the true instincts of the age for the very reason that they were rather artlessly composed. 1 steeped myself in public records that reveal the opinions and tastes of the French as the Revolution approached.