the inferior classes. As the Revolution draws near and financial
embarrassment grows more acute, the pickings of the favored class have
become scarcer, while the appetite for them has increased. Preferment in
church or state must no longer go to the vulgar.

There is a distinction among nobles quite apart from the length of their
pedigree. We find a higher and a lower nobility, with no clear line of
division between them. They are in fact the very rich, whose families
have some prominence, and the moderately well off. For it may be noticed
that among nobles of all times and countries, although wealth unaided
may not give titles and place, it is pretty much a condition precedent
for acquiring them. A man may be of excellent family, and poor; but to
be a great noble, a man must be rich. In old France the road to
preferment was through the court; but to shine at court a considerable
income was required; and so the _noblesse de cour_ was more or less
identical with the richer nobility.

In this small but influential part of the nation, both the good and the
bad qualities which are favored by court life had reached a high degree
of development. The old French nobility has sometimes been represented
as exhibiting the best of manners and the worst of morals. I believe
that both sides of the picture have been painted in too high colors. The
courtier was not always polite, nor were all great nobles libertines.
Faithful husbands and wives were by no means exceptional; although, as
in other places, well behaved people did not make a parade of their
morality. There is such a thing as a French prig; but prigs are neither
common nor popular in France. Before the Revolution the art of pleasing
was more studied than it is to-day,--that art by which men and women
make themselves agreeable to their acquaintance.