nce,
the strong will of the statesman who concentrates a thousand dazzling
qualities in himself, the general's sword--all these victories, in
short, which a single individual will win, that he may tower above the
rest of the world, the patrician class is now bound to win and keep
exclusively. They must head the new forces as they once headed the
material forces; how should they keep the position unless they are
worthy of it? How, unless they are the soul and brain of a nation,
shall they set its hands moving? How lead a people without the power of
command? And what is the marshal's baton without the innate power of
the captain in the man who wields it? The Faubourg Saint-Germain took to
playing with batons, and fancied that all the power was in its hands.
It inverted the terms of the proposition which called it into existence.
And instead of flinging away the insignia which offended the people,
and quietly grasping the power, it allowed the bourgeoisie to seize the
authority, clung with fatal obstinacy to its shadow, and over and over
again forgot the laws which a minority must observe if it would live.
When an aristocracy is scarce a thousandth part of the body social, it
is bound today, as of old, to multiply its points of action, so as to
counterbalance the weight of the masses in a great crisis. And in our
days those means of action must be living forces, and not historical
memories.

In France, unluckily, the noblesse were still so puffed up with the
notion of their vanished power, that it was difficult to contend against
a kind of innate presumption in themselves. Perhaps this is a national
defect. The Frenchman is less given than anyone else to undervalue
himself; it comes natural to him to go from his degree to the one above
it; and while it is a rare thing for him to pity the unfortunates
over whose heads he rises, he always groans in spirit to see so many
fortunate people above him. He is very far from heartless, but too
often he prefers to listen to his intellect. The national instinct which
brings the Frenchman to the front, the vanity that wastes his substance,
is as much a dominant passion as thrift in the Dutch. For three
centuries it swayed the noblesse, who, in this respect, were certainly
pre-eminently French. The scion of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, beholding
his material superiority, was fully persuaded of his intellectual
superiority. And everything contributed to confirm him in his belief;
for eve