"The knell of the highest society is tolling," said a Russian Prince.
"Do you hear it? And the first stroke is your modern word _lady_."

"You are right, Prince," said de Marsay. "The 'perfect lady,' issuing
from the ranks of the nobility, or sprouting from the citizen class,
and the product of every soil, even of the provinces is the expression
of these times, a last remaining embodiment of good taste, grace, wit,
and distinction, all combined, but dwarfed. We shall see no more great
ladies in France, but there will be 'ladies' for a long time, elected
by public opinion to form an upper chamber of women, and who will be
among the fair sex what a 'gentleman' is in England."

"And that they call progress!" exclaimed Mademoiselle des Touches. "I
should like to know where the progress lies?"

"Why, in this," said Madame de Nucingen. "Formerly a woman might have
the voice of a fish-seller, the walk of a grenadier, the face of an
impudent courtesan, her hair too high on her forehead, a large foot, a
thick hand--she was a great lady in spite of it all; but in these
days, even if she were a Montmorency--if a Montmorency would ever be
such a creature--she would not be a lady."

"But what do you mean by a 'perfect lady'?" asked Count Adam Laginski.

"She is a modern product, a deplorable triumph of the elective system
as applied to the fair sex," said the Minister. "Every revolution has
a word of its own which epitomizes and depicts it."

"You are right," said the Russian, who had come to make a literary