st sign of good company,--and for the simple
reason, that no one sought to infringe. There was no cause for
insolence, or for what in England is called "exclusiveness," because
there was no necessity to repel any disposition to encroach. No one
dreamed of the possibility of encroaching upon his neighbor's grounds,
or of taking, in the slightest degree, his neighbor's place.

The first French Revolution caused no such sudden and total disruption
of the old social traditions as has been generally supposed; and as
far as mere social intercourse and social conventionalities were
concerned, there was, even amongst the terrible popular dictators of
1793, more of the _tone_ of the _ci-devant_ good company
than could possibly be imagined. In later times, every one who knew
Fouche remembers that he was constantly in the habit of expressing his
indignation at the want of good-breeding of the young exquisites of
the Empire, and used perpetually to exclaim, "In _my time_" this
or that "would not have been allowed," or, "In _my_ time we were
accustomed to do" so and so. Now Fouche's "time" was that which is
regarded as the period of universal beheading and levelling.

It is certain, that, under the _regime_ of the Revolution itself,
bitter class-hatreds did not at first show themselves in the peaceful
atmosphere of society,--and that for more than one reason. First of
all, in a certain sense, "society," it may be said, was
_not_. Next, what subsisted of society was fragmentary, and was
formed by small isolated groups or coteries, pretty homogeneously
composed, or, when not so as to rank and station, rendered homogeneous
by community of suffering. It must not be imagined that only the
highest class in France paid for its opinions or its vanities with
loss of life and fortune. The victims were everywhere; for the changes
in the governing forces were so perpetual, that, more or less, every
particular form of envy and hatred had its day of power, and levelled
its blows at the objects of its special antipathy. In this way, the
aristocracy and the _bourgeoisie_ were often brought into
contact; marriages even were contracted, whether during imprisonment
or under the pressure of poverty, that never would have been dreamt of
in a normal state of things; and whilst parents of opposite conditions
shook hands in the scaffold-surveying _charrettes_, the children
either drew near to each other, in a mutual helpfulness, the principle
whereof was