and others who
shone at the court of Louis XV. Compare the courtiers of Henri IV. with
those of Louis XIV.; you will hardly find five great families of the
former time still in existence. The nephew of the great Richelieu was
a very insignificant person at the court of Louis XIV.; while His
Majesty's favorite, Villeroi, was the grandson of a secretary ennobled
by Charles IX. And so it befell that the d'Esgrignons, all but princes
under the Valois, and all-powerful in the time of Henri IV., had no
fortune whatever at the court of Louis XVIII., which gave them not so
much as a thought. At this day there are names as famous as those
of royal houses--the Foix-Graillys, for instance, or the
d'Herouvilles--left to obscurity tantamount to extinction for want of
money, the one power of the time.

All which things Victurnien beheld entirely from his own point of view;
he felt the equality that he saw in Paris as a personal wrong. The
monster Equality was swallowing down the last fragments of social
distinction in the Restoration. Having made up his mind on this head, he
immediately proceeded to try to win back his place with such dangerous,
if blunted weapons, as the age left to the noblesse. It is an expensive
matter to gain the attention of Paris. To this end, Victurnien adopted
some of the ways then in vogue. He felt that it was a necessity to have
horses and fine carriages, and all the accessories of modern luxury;
he felt, in short, "that a man must keep abreast of the times," as de
Marsay said--de Marsay, the first dandy that he came across in the first
drawing-room to which he was introduced. For his misfortune, he fell
in with a set of roues, with de Marsay, de Ronquerolles, Maxime de
Trailles, des Lupeaulx, Rastignac, Ajuda-Pinto, Beaudenord, de la
Roche-Hugon, de Manerville, and the Vandenesses, whom he met wherever he
went, and a great many houses were open to a young man with his ancient
name and reputation for wealth. He went to the Marquise d'Espard's,
to the Duchesses de Grandlieu, de Carigliano, and de Chaulieu, to the
Marquises d'Aiglemont and de Listomere, to Mme. de Serizy's, to the
Opera, to the embassies and elsewhere. The Faubourg Saint-Germain has
its provincial genealogies at its fingers' ends; a great name once
recognized and adopted therein is a passport which opens many a door
that will scarcely turn on its hinges for unknown names or the lions of
a lower rank.

Victurnien found his relatives both a