Jacques-Louis Ménétra

“JOURNAL OF MY LIFE by Jacques-Louis Menetra at Los Angeles Times.”

“Perhaps because his own father had been brutal towards him and his mother had died while he was a child, Ménétra had clear assumptions about the roles father and mother should play: the former as the source of authority, punishment and advice, the latter of affection and imagination.”

“The French breathed blood. They were like cannibals.”

“When I am with old friends... We recount what we have seen what we have felt the good and the evil that the Revolution has done all the assaults the days the nights the punishments and the fate of our unfortunate friends who perished in the time of Terror when good men feared for their lives We are beginning to see the twilight of the times in which our families were happy.”

“They flattered the ambitious and all the ills came gradually to a head. Murder drowning everything was allowed. Intriguers monopolised all the offices. Good men could only mutter for if they spoke they were lost. Hatred vengeance everything was permitted and nobody dared open his mouth...”