no one curbed the little prince's will; and naturally he grew up
insolent and audacious, selfish as a prince, self-willed as the most
high-spirited cardinal of the Middle Ages,--defects of character which
any one might guess from his qualities, essentially those of the
noble.

The Chevalier was a man of the good old times when the Gray Musketeers
were the terror of the Paris theatres, when they horsewhipped the
watch and drubbed servers of writs, and played a host of page's
pranks, at which Majesty was wont to smile so long as they were
amusing. This charming deceiver and hero of the ruelles had no small
share in bringing about the disasters which afterwards befell. The
amiable old gentleman, with nobody to understand him, was not a little
pleased to find a budding Faublas, who looked the part to admiration,
and put him in mind of his own young days. So, making no allowance for
the difference of the times, he sowed the maxims of a roue of the
Encyclopaedic period broadcast in the boy's mind. He told wicked
anecdotes of the reign of His Majesty Louis XV.; he glorified the
manners and customs of the year 1750; he told of the orgies in petites
maisons, the follies of courtesans, the capital tricks played on
creditors, the manners, in short, which furnished forth Dancourt's
comedies and Beaumarchais' epigrams. And unfortunately, the corruption
lurking beneath the utmost polish tricked itself out in Voltairean
wit. If the Chevalier went rather too far at times, he always added as
a corrective that a man must always behave himself like a gentleman.

Of all this discourse, Victurnien comprehended just so much as
flattered his passions. From the first he saw his old father laughing
with the Chevalier. The two elderly men considered that the pride of a
d'Esgrignon was a sufficient safeguard against anything unbefitting;
as for a dishonorable action, no one in the house imagined that a
d'Esgrignon could be guilty of it. /Honor/, the great principle of
Monarchy, was planted firm like a beacon in the hearts of the family;
it lighted up the least action, it kindled the least thought of a
d'Esgrignon. "A d'Esgrignon ought not to permit himself to do such and
such a thing; he bears a name which pledges him to make a future
worthy of the past"--a noble teaching which should have been
sufficient in itself to keep alive the tradition of noblesse--had
been, as it were, the burden of Victurnien's cradle song. He heard
them from the old