mothers to give their boys a start in independent and industrial
professions, explaining that military posts and high Government
appointments must at last pertain, in a quite constitutional
order, to the younger sons of members of the peerage. According
to him, the people had conquered a sufficiently large share in
practical government by its elective assembly, its appointments
to law-offices, and those of the exchequer, which, said he, would
always, as heretofore, be the natural right of the distinguished
men of the third estate.

These new notions of the head of the Fontaines, and the prudent
matches for his eldest girls to which they had led, met with strong
resistance in the bosom of his family. The Comtesse de Fontaine
remained faithful to the ancient beliefs which no woman could disown,
who, through her mother, belonged to the Rohans. Although she had for
a while opposed the happiness and fortune awaiting her two eldest
girls, she yielded to those private considerations which husband and
wife confide to each other when their heads are resting on the same
pillow. Monsieur de Fontaine calmly pointed out to his wife, by exact
arithmetic that their residence in Paris, the necessity for
entertaining, the magnificence of the house which made up to them now
for the privations so bravely shared in La Vendee, and the expenses of
their sons, swallowed up the chief part of their income from salaries.
They must therefore seize, as a boon from heaven, the opportunities
which offered for settling their girls with such wealth. Would they
not some day enjoy sixty--eighty--a hundred thousand francs a year?
Such advantageous matches were not to be met with every day for girls
without a portion. Again, it was time that they should begin to think
of economizing, to add to the estate of Fontaine, and re-establish the
old territorial fortune of the family. The Countess yielded to such