taine hoped that one of the sudden gusts of legislation, whose
unexpected efforts then startled the oldest politicians, might carry
him up to the rank of peer. One of his most rigid principles was to
recognize no nobility in France but that of the peerage--the only
families that might enjoy any privileges.

"A nobility bereft of privileges," he would say, "is a tool without a
handle."

As far from Lafayette's party as he was from La Bourdonnaye's, he
ardently engaged in the task of general reconciliation, which was to
result in a new era and splendid fortunes for France. He strove to
convince the families who frequented his drawing-room, or those whom
he visited, how few favorable openings would henceforth be offered by a
civil or military career. He urged mothers to give their boys a start in
independent and industrial professions, explaining that military posts
and high Government appointments must at last pertain, in a quite
constitutional order, to the younger sons of members of the peerage.
According to him, the people had conquered a sufficiently large share
in practical government by its elective assembly, its appointments to
law-offices, and those of the exchequer, which, said he, would always,
as heretofore, be the natural right of the distinguished men of the
third estate.

These new notions of the head of the Fontaines, and the prudent matches
for his eldest girls to which they had led, met with strong resistance
in the bosom of his family. The Comtesse de Fontaine remained faithful
to the ancient beliefs which no woman could disown, who, through her
mother, belonged to the Rohans. Although she had for a while opposed
the happiness and fortune awaiting her two eldest girls, she yielded
to those private considerations which husband and wife confide to each
other when their heads are resting on the same pillow. Monsieur de
Fontaine calmly pointed out to his wife, by exact arithmetic that their
residence in Paris, the necessity for entertaining, the magnificence of
the house which made up to them now for the privations so bravely shared
in La Vendee, and the expenses of their sons, swallowed up the chief
part of their income from salaries. They must therefore seize, as a boon
from heaven, the opportunities which offered for settling their girls
with such wealth. Would they not some day enjoy sixty--eighty--a hundred
thousand francs a year? Such advantageous matches were not to be met
with every day for girls