head to fall at its feet, it is pretty sure sooner or later
to discover that this is a suicidal measure; and since nations have no
desire to perish, they set to work at once to grow a new head. If they
lack the strength for this, they perish as Rome perished, and Venice,
and so many other states.

This distinction between the upper and lower spheres of social activity,
emphasized by differences in their manner of living, necessarily
implies that in the highest aristocracy there is real worth and some
distinguishing merit. In any state, no matter what form of "government"
is affected, so soon as the patrician class fails to maintain that
complete superiority which is the condition of its existence, it ceases
to be a force, and is pulled down at once by the populace. The people
always wish to see money, power, and initiative in their leaders, hands,
hearts, and heads; they must be the spokesmen, they must represent the
intelligence and the glory of the nation. Nations, like women, love
strength in those who rule them; they cannot give love without respect;
they refuse utterly to obey those of whom they do not stand in awe.
An aristocracy fallen into contempt is a _roi faineant_, a husband in
petticoats; first it ceases to be itself, and then it ceases to be.

And in this way the isolation of the great, the sharply marked
distinction in their manner of life, or in a word, the general custom
of the patrician caste is at once the sign of a real power, and their
destruction so soon as that power is lost. The Faubourg Saint-Germain
failed to recognise the conditions of its being, while it would still
have been easy to perpetuate its existence, and therefore was brought
low for a time. The Faubourg should have looked the facts fairly in the
face, as the English aristocracy did before them; they should have seen
that every institution has its climacteric periods, when words lose
their old meanings, and ideas reappear in a new guise, and the whole
conditions of politics wear a changed aspect, while the underlying
realities undergo no essential alteration.

These ideas demand further development which form an essential part of
this episode; they are given here both as a succinct statement of the
causes, and an explanation of the things which happen in the course of
the story.

The stateliness of the castles and palaces where nobles dwell; the
luxury of the details; the constantly maintained sumptuousness of the
furniture; the