Peter the Hermit, Calvin, and Robespierre, sons of the same soil, at intervals of three centuries were, in a political sense, the levers of Archimedes. Each in turn was an embodied idea finding its fulcrum in the interests of man.
Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850), French novelist. (1846, trans. by George Saintsbury, 1971). About Catherine of Medici, first published in book form as Catherine de Medici expliquée, Souverain (1843). It was subsequently included in the Conte et romans philosophiques, in the Etudes philsophique, and finally in the Comédie humaine.
