forth and forced to adopt new customs, ready to carry principles to
any lengths and to dare anything; indocile by disposition, but better
pleased with the arbitrary and even violent rule of a sovereign than
with a free and regular government under its chief citizens; now fixed
in hostility to subjection of any kind, now so passionately wedded to
servitude that nations made to serve cannot vie with it; led by a thread
so long as no word of resistance is spoken, wholly ungovernable when the
standard of revolt is raised,--thus always deceiving its masters,
who fear it too much or too little; never so free that it cannot be
subjugated, never so kept down that it cannot break the yoke; qualified
for every pursuit, but excelling in nothing but war; more prone to
worship chance, force, success, _eclat_, noise, than real glory; endowed
with more heroism than virtue, more genius than common sense; better
adapted for the conception of grand designs than the accomplishment of
great enterprises; the most brilliant and the most dangerous nation
of Europe, and the one that is surest to inspire admiration, hatred,
terror, or pity, but never indifference?"[1]

What other social sphere could afford room for the vocation so aptly
described in the following sketch of his "ways and means," given in a
recent picture of life in Paris by a sycophant of millionnaires, at
a period when interests, not rights, are the watchwords of the
nation?--"Mon role de familier dans une veritable population d'enrichis
me donnait du credit dans les boudoirs, et mon credit dans les boudoirs
ajoutait a ma faveur pres ces pauvres diables de millionaires, presque
tous vieux et blases, courant toujours en chancelant apres un plaisir
nouveau. Les marchands de vin me font la cour comme les jolies femmes,
pour que je daigne leur indiqner des connaisseurs assez riches pour
payer les bonnes choses le prix qu'elles valent. Mon metier est de tout
savoir,--l'anecdote de la cour, le scandale de la ville, le secret des