y familiarity as CHUMS, a
vulgar but expressive word. Men are made so; in almost every class they
will allow to a gossip, or a vulgar soul that flatters them, facilities
and favors they refuse to the superiority they resent, in whatever
form it may show itself. The shopkeeper who rails at the Court has his
courtiers.

In short, the manners of the Marquis and his children were certain to
arouse ill-feeling in their neighbors, and to work them up by degrees to
the pitch of malevolence when men do not hesitate at an act of meanness
if only it may damage the adversary they have themselves created.

M. d'Espard was a gentleman, as his wife was a lady, by birth and
breeding; noble types, already so rare in France that the observer
can easily count the persons who perfectly realize them. These two
characters are based on primitive ideas, on beliefs that may be called
innate, on habits formed in infancy, and which have ceased to exist. To
believe in pure blood, in a privileged race, to stand in thought above
other men, must we not from birth have measured the distance which
divides patricians from the mob? To command, must we not have never
met our equal? And finally, must not education inculcate the ideas with
which Nature inspires those great men on whose brow she has placed a
crown before their mother has ever set a kiss there? These ideas, this
education, are no longer possible in France, where for forty years past
chance has arrogated the right of making noblemen by dipping them in the
blood of battles, by gilding them with glory, by crowning them with the
halo of genius; where the abolition of entail and of eldest sonship,
by frittering away estates, compels the nobleman to attend to his own
business instead of attending to affairs of state, and where personal
greatness can only be such greatness as is acquired by long and patient
toil: quite a new era.

Regarded as a relic of that great institution know as feudalism, M.
d'Espard deserved respectful admiration. If he believed himself to be by
blood the superior of other men, he also believed in all the obligations
of nobility; he had the virtues and the strength it demands. He had
brought up his children in his own principles, and taught them from the
cradle the religion of their caste. A deep sense of their own dignity,
pride of name, the conviction that they were by birth great, gave rise
in them to a kingly pride, the courage of knights, and the protecting
kindness