I would like us to receive a pointer to Yuri Tulupenko's indication for the Condorcet quote "Today Reason burns the innumerable volumes which attest the vanity of a caste. Other vestiges remain in public and private libraries. They must be involved in a common destruction". I cannot believe that Condorcet meant the deliberate PHYSICAL destruction of papers relating to the history of the noble families of France. Might he not have meant the end of the ancient regime's governmental authority based on the genealogical papers of the aristocrats, "destructed" by the revolutionary rule of popular/democratic consent? Marcel Claessen