which damaged the cause of religion and necessitated a good deal of
hypocrisy; a certain attitude of protest on the part of loftier and
clearer-sighted men who set their faces against Court jealousies; and
the disaffection of the provincial families, who often came of
purer descent than the nobles of the Court which alienated them from
itself--all these things combined to bring about a most discordant state
of things in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. It was neither compact in its
organisation, nor consequent in its action; neither completely moral,
nor frankly dissolute; it did not corrupt, nor was it corrupted; it
would neither wholly abandon the disputed points which damaged its
cause, nor yet adopt the policy that might have saved it. In short,
however effete individuals might be, the party as a whole was none
the less armed with all the great principles which lie at the roots of
national existence. What was there in the Faubourg that it should perish
in its strength?

It was very hard to please in the choice of candidates; the Faubourg
had good taste, it was scornfully fastidious, yet there was nothing very
glorious nor chivalrous truly about its fall.

In the Emigration of 1789 there were some traces of a loftier feeling;
but in the Emigration of 1830 from Paris into the country there was
nothing discernible but self-interest. A few famous men of letters, a
few oratorical triumphs in the Chambers, M. de Talleyrand's attitude
in the Congress, the taking of Algiers, and not a few names that found
their way from the battlefield into the pages of history--all these
things were so many examples set before the French noblesse to show that
it was still open to them to take their part in the national existence,
and to win recognition of their claims, if, indeed, they could
condescend thus far. In every living organism the work of bringing
the whole into harmony within itself is always going on. If a man is
indolent, the indolence shows itself in everything that he does; and,
in the same manner, the general spirit of a class is pretty plainly
manifested in the face it turns on the world, and the soul informs the
body.

The women of the Restoration displayed neither the proud disregard
of public opinion shown by the court ladies of olden time in their
wantonness, nor yet the simple grandeur of the tardy virtues by which
they expiated their sins and shed so bright a glory about their names.
There was nothing either very frivo