The nobility continues to hold us down. To quote the Memoir of the Princes of the Blood, “May the Third Estate therefore cease to attack the rights of the first two orders; rights which, no less ancient than the monarchy, must be as unchanging as its constitution” (Dwyer and McPhee, 11). I ask what rights we have? What are we living except to be shot or starved?

— Ambre, Parisian fishwife