in the first place, the great system of English Toryism was far
too large for narrow minds; the importation required time, and in
France a tardy success is no better than a fiasco. So far,
moreover, from adopting a policy of redemption, and looking for
new forces where God puts them, these petty great folk took a
dislike to any capacity that did not issue from their midst; and,
lastly, instead of growing young again, the Faubourg
Saint-Germain grew positively older.

Etiquette, not an institution of primary necessity, might have
been maintained if it had appeared only on state occasions, but
as it was, there was a daily wrangle over precedence; it ceased
to be a matter of art or court ceremonial, it became a question
of power. And if from the outset the Crown lacked an adviser
equal to so great a crisis, the aristocracy was still more
lacking in a sense of its wider interests, an instinct which
might have supplied the deficiency. They stood nice about M. de
Talleyrand's marriage, when M. de Talleyrand was the one man
among them with the steel-encompassed brains that can forge a new
political system and begin a new career of glory for a nation.
The Faubourg scoffed at a minister if he was not gently born, and
produced no one of gentle birth that was fit to be a minister.
There were plenty of nobles fitted to serve their country by
raising the dignity of justices of the peace, by improving the
land, by opening out roads and canals, and taking an active and
leading part as country gentlemen; but these had sold their
estates to gamble on the Stock Exchange. Again the Faubourg
might have absorbed the energetic men among the bourgeoisie, and
opened their ranks to the ambition which was undermining
authority; they preferred instead to fight, and to fight unarmed,