Christian charity, or met together to partake of
amusements, the aim whereof was oblivion. For several years, the turn
of every individual for execution might come, and therefore it was
difficult, on the other hand, to see who might also _not_ be a
friend.

This began to be modified under the Empire, but in a shape not
hitherto foreseen. Military glory began to long for what the genuine
Revolutionists termed "feudal distinctions." Napoleon was desirous of
a court and of an aristocracy; he set to work to create a
_noblesse_, and dukes and counts were fabricated by the
dozen. Very soon the strong love of depreciation, that is inherent in
every Frenchman, seized upon even the higher plebeian classes, and,
discontented as they were at seeing the liberties of the movement of
'89 utterly confiscated by a military chief, and antipathetic as they
have been, time out of mind, to what are called _les traineurs de
sabre_, the civilians of France, her _bourgeois_, who were to
have their day,--but with very different feelings in 1830,--joined
with the genuine Pre-Revolutionary aristocrats, and the _noblesse de
l'Empire_ was laughed at and taken _en grippe_. Here was, in
reality, the first wide breach made in France in the edifice of
good-breeding and good-manners; and those who have been eye-witnesses
to the metamorphosis will admit that the guillotine of Danton and
Robespierre did even less to destroy _le bon ton_ of the
_ancien regime_ than was achieved by the guard-room habits and
morals of Bonaparte's glorious troopers, rushing, as they did, booted
and spurred, into the emblazoned sanctuary of heraldic distinctions,
and taking, as it were, _la societe_ by storm.

But soon another alliance and other enmities were to be formed. The
Empire fell; the Bourbons returned to France; Louis XVIII. recognized
the _noblesse_ of the Imperial government, and the constitution of
society as it had been battled for by the Revolution. At the same time
his court was filled with all the great historic names of the country,
who returned, no longer avowedly the first in authority, and therefore
prompt to condescend, but the first in presumption, and therefore
prompt to take offence. The new alliance that was formed was that of
the plebeian caste with the _noblesse de l'Empire_, against which it
had been previously so incensed. Notwithstanding all the efforts
sincerely made by Louis XVIII. to establish a constitutional
government and to promote a