Sara E. Melzer is Associate Professor of French at the University of California, Los Angeles, author of "Discourses of the Fall: A Study of Pascal's Pensees" (California, 1986), and coeditor (with Leslie W. Rabine) of "Rebel Daughters: Women and the French Revolution" (1992). Kathryn Norberg is an Associate Professor at UCLA and former Director of the UCLA Center for the Study of Women. She has coedited (with Philip T. Hoffman) "Fiscal Crises, Liberty, and Representative Government, 1450-1789" (1994) and is the author of "Rich and Poor in Grenoble, 1600-1814" (California, 1985).