d of business, is that
same spirit of freedom which animates the intellectual world. In a
society in process of formation, the individual, enfranchised, gives the
rein to his boldness. He despises tradition, gives himself up with
unrestrained delight to his virtuosity. There are to be no more limits
on speculation, no more fetters on commerce, no more meddling of
authority in relations between employers and employed. The most skillful
wins. Competition, up to this time held in check, runs riot. In a few
years enormous fortunes are built up, others are swallowed up in
resounding bankruptcies. The Antwerp exchange is a pandemonium where
bankers, deep-sea sailors, stock-jobbers, dealers in futures,
millionaire merchants, jostle each other--and sharpers and adventurers
to whom all means of money-getting, even assassination, are acceptable.

This confused recasting of the economic world transfers the role played
by the capitalists of the late Middle Ages in a class of new men. Few
are the descendants of the business men of the fourteenth century among
those of the fifteenth and sixteenth. Thrown out of their course by the
current of events, they have not been willing to risk fortunes already
acquired. Most of them are seen turning toward administrative careers,
entering the service of the state as members of the councils of justice
or finance and aspiring to the _noblesse de robe_, which, with the aid
of fortunate marriages, will land their sons in the circle of the true
nobility. As for the new rich of the period, they almost all appear to
us like parvenus. Jacques Coeur is a parvenu in France. The Fugger and
many other German financiers--the Herwarts, the Seilers, the Manlichs,
the Haugs--are parvenus of whose families we know little before the
fifteenth century, and so are the Frescobaldi and the Gualterotti of
Florence, or that Gaspar Ducci of Pistoia who is perhaps the most
representative of the fortune-hunters of the period.[29] Later, when
Amsterdam has inherited the commercial hegemony of Antwerp, the
importance of the parvenus characterizes it not less clearly. We may
merely mention here, among the first makers of its greatness, Willem
Usselinx,[30] Balthazar de Moucheron, Isaac Lemaire. And if from the
world of commerce we turn toward that of industry the aspect is the
same. Christophe Plantin, the famous printer, is the son of a simple
peasant of Touraine.

The exuberance of capitalism which reached its height in