de Lespinasse, "that what is well will be done and will be done well.

Never, no never, were two more enlightened, more disinterested, more virtuous men more powerfully knit together in a greater and a higher cause." The first care of M.de.
Malesherbes was to protest against the sealed letters (_lettres de cachet_--summary arrest), the application whereof he was for putting in the hands of a special tribunal; he visited the Bastille, releasing the prisoners confined on simple suspicion.

He had already dared to advise the king to a convocation of the states-general.

"In France," he had written to Louis XVI., "the nation has always had a deep sense of its right and its liberty.

Our maxims have been more than once recognized by our kings; they have even gloried in being the sovereigns of a free people.