nels and captains entertain their subordinates
and thus expend "much beyond their salaries."[2171] This is one of the
reasons why regiments are reserved for the sons of the best families,
and companies in them for wealthy gentlemen. The vast royal tree,
expanding so luxuriantly at Versailles, sends forth its offshoots to
overrun France by thousands, and to bloom everywhere, as at Versailles,
in bouquets of finery and of drawing room sociability.

VII. Provincial Nobility.

Prelates, seigniors and minor provincial nobles.--The feudal
aristocracy transformed into a drawing room group.

Following this pattern, and as well through the effect of temperature,
we see, even in remote provinces, all aristocratic branches having a
flourishing social life. Lacking other employment, the nobles exchange
visits, and the chief function of a prominent seignior is to do the
honors of his house creditably. This applies as well to ecclesiastics as
to laymen. The one hundred and thirty-one bishops and archbishops, the
seven hundred abbes-commendatory, are all men of the world; they behave
well, are rich, and are not austere, while their episcopal palace or
abbey is for them a country-house, which they repair or embellish with
a view to the time they pass in it, and to the company they welcome to
it.[2172] At Clairvaux, Dom Rocourt, very affable with men and still
more gallant with the ladies, never drives out except with four horses,
and with a mounted groom ahead; his monks do him the honors of a
Monseigneur, and he maintains a veritable court. The chartreuse of Val
Saint-Pierre is a sumptuous palace in the center of an immense domain,
and the father-procurator, Dom Effinger, passes his days in entertaining
his guests.[2173] At the convent of Origny, near Saint-Quentin,[2174]
"the abbess has her domestics and her carriage and horses, and receives
men on visits, who dine in her apartments." The princess Christine,
abbess of Remiremont, with her lady canonesses, are almost always
traveling; and yet "they enjoy themselves in the abbey," entertaining
there a good many people "in the private apartments of the princess, and
in the strangers' rooms."[2175] The twenty-five noble chapters of
women, and the nineteen noble chapters of men, are as many permanent
drawing-rooms and gathering places incessantly resorted to by the fine
society which a slight ecclesiastical barrier scarcely divides from the
great world from which it is r