THE NOBILITY.
The second order in the state was the Nobility. It is a mistake,
however, to suppose that this word bears on the Continent exactly the
same meaning as in England. Where all the children of a nobleman are
nobles, a strict class is created. An English peerage, descending only
to the eldest son, is more in the nature of an office. The French
_noblesse_ in the latter years of the old monarchy comprised nearly
all persons living otherwise than by their daily toil, together with the
higher part of the legal profession. While the clergy had political
rights and a corporate existence, and acted by means of an assembly, the
nobility had but privileges. This, however, was true only of the older
provinces, the "Lands of Elections," whose ancient rights had been
abolished. In some of the "Lands of Estates," which still kept a remnant
of self-government, the order was to some extent a political body with
constitutional rights.
The nobility have been reckoned at about one hundred thousand souls,
forming twenty-five or thirty thousand families, owning one fifth of the
soil of France. Only a part of this land, however, was occupied by the
nobles for their gardens, parks, and chases. The greater portion was let
to farmers, either at a fixed rent, or on the _métayer_ system, by
which the landlord was paid by a share of the crops. And beside his rent
or his portion, the noble received other things from his tenants:
payments and services according to ancient custom, days of labor, and
occasional dues. He could tramp over the ploughed lands with his
servants in search of game, although he might destroy the growing corn.
The game itself, which the peasant might not kill, was still more
destructive. Such rights as these, especially where they were harshly
enforced, caused both loss and irritation to the poor. Although there
were far too many absentees among the great families, yet the larger
number of the nobles spent most of their time at home on their estates,
looking after their farms and their tenants, attending to local
business, and saving up money to be spent in visits to the towns, or to
Paris. When they were absent, their bailiffs were harder masters than
themselves. Unfortunately the eyes of the noble class were turned rather
to the enjoyments of the city and the court than to the duties of
country life on their estates, an inevitable consequence of their loss
of local power.
If the nobles had few political rights, they had plenty of public
privileges. They were exempt from the most onerous taxes, and the best
places under the government were reserved for them. Therefore every man
who rose to eminence or to wealth in France strove to enter their ranks,
and since nobility was a purchasable commodity, through the
multiplication of venal offices which conferred it, none who had much
money to spend failed to secure the coveted rank. Thus the order had
come to comprise almost all persons of note, and a great part of the
educated class. To describe its ideas and aspirations is to describe
those of most of the leaders of France. Nobility was no longer a mark of
high birth, nor a brevet of distinction; it was merely a sign that a
man, or some of his ancestors, had had property. Of course all persons
in the order were not equal. The descendants of the old families, which
had been great in the land for hundreds of years, despised the mushroom
noblemen of yesterday, and talked contemptuously of "nobility of the
gown." Theirs was of the sword, and dated from the Crusades. And under
Louis XVI., after the first dismissal of Necker, there was a reaction,
and ground gained by the older nobility over the newer, and by both over
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.
"In old times, under Louis XV. and Louis XVI.," says the Viscount of
Ségur, "a young man entering society made what was called a
_début_. He cultivated accomplishments. His father suggested and
directed this work, for work it was; but the mother, the mother only,
could bring her son to that last degree of politeness, of grace and
amiability, which completed his education. Beside her natural
tenderness, her pride was so much at stake that you may judge what care,
what studied pains, she used in giving her children, on their entrance
into society, all the charm that she could develop in them, or bestow
upon them. Thence came that rare politeness, that exquisite taste, that
moderation in speech and jest, that graceful carriage, in short that
combination which characterized what was called good company, and which
always distinguished French society even among foreigners. If a young
man, because of his youth, had failed in attention to a lady, in
consideration for a man older than himself, in deference for old age,
the mother of the thoughtless young fellow was informed of it by her
friends the same evening; and on the following day he was sure to
receive advice and reproof."[Footnote: The Viscount of Ségur was
brother to the Count of Ségur, from the preface to whose Memoirs this
extract is taken.]
The instruction thus early given was not confined to forms. Indeed,
French society in that day was probably less formal in some ways than
any other European society; and in Paris people were more free than in
the provinces. Although making a bow was a fine art, although a lady's
curtsey was expected to be at once "natural, soft, modest, gracious, and
dignified," ceremonious greetings were considered unnecessary, and few
compliments were paid. To praise a woman's beauty to her face would have
been to disparage her modesty. Good manners consisted in no small part
in distinguishing perfectly what was due to every one, and in expressing
that distinction with lightness and grace. Different modes of address
were appropriate toward parents, relations, friends, acquaintances,
strangers, your superiors in rank, your poor dependents, yet all must be
treated with courtesy and consideration. Such manners are possible only
where social distinctions are positively ascertained. In old France, at
least, every man had his place and knew where he was.
But it was in their dealings with ladies that the Frenchmen of that day
showed the perfection of their system. Vicious they might be, but
discourteous they were not. No well-bred man would then appear in a
lady's room carelessly dressed, or in boots. In speech between the
sexes, the third person was generally used, and a gentleman in speaking
to a lady dropped his voice to a lower tone than he employed to men.
Gentlemen were careful before ladies not to treat even each other with
familiarity. Still less would one of them, however intimate he might be
with a lady's husband or brother, speak to her of his friend by any name
less formal than his title. These habits have left their mark in France
and elsewhere to this day; but the mark is fast disappearing, not
altogether to the advantage of social life.[Footnote: Genlis,
Dictionnaire des Étiquettes, i. 94, 218; ii. 194, 347.]
Friendship between men was sometimes carried so far as to interfere with
the claims of domestic affection. At least it was faithful and sincere,
and the man on whom fortune had frowned, the fallen minister, or the
disgraced courtier, was followed in his adversity by the kindness of his
friends. Of all the virtues this is perhaps the one which in our hurried
age tends most to disappear. It is left for the occupation of idle
hours, and the smallest piece of triviality which can be tortured into
the name of business, is allowed to crowd away those constantly repeated
attentions which might add a true grace and refinement to the lives of
those who gave and of those who received them. It is often said that
friendships are formed only in youth. Is not this partly because youth
Revolution, men of all ages made friendships, and supported them by the
consideration for others which is at the bottom of all politeness. The
Frenchman is nervous and irritable. When he lets his temper get beyond
his control, he is fierce and violent. He has little of the easy-going
good-nature under inconveniences, which some branches of the Teutonic
race believe themselves to possess. He has less kindly merriment than
the Tuscan. But he has trained himself for social life; and has learned,
when on his good behavior, to make others happy about him. And it is
part of the well-bred Frenchman's pride and happiness to be almost
always on his good behavior.
In one respect Paris in the eighteenth century was more like a
provincial town than like a great modern capital. Acquaintanceship had
not swallowed up intimacy. A man or a woman did not undertake to keep on
terms of civility with so many people that he could not find time to see
his best friends oftener than once or twice a year. The much vaunted
_salons_ of the old monarchy were charming, in great measure
because they were reasonably organized. An agreeable woman would draw
her friends about her; they would meet in her parlor until they knew
each other, and would be together often enough to keep touch
intellectually. The talker knew his audience and felt at home with it.
The listener had learned to expect something worth hearing. The mistress
of the house kept language and men within bounds, and had her own way of
getting rid of bores. But even French wit and vivacity were not always
equal to the demands upon them. "I remember," says Montesquieu, "that I
once had the curiosity to count how many times I should hear a little
story, which certainly did not deserve to be told or remembered; during
three weeks that it occupied the polite world, I heard it repeated two
hundred and twenty-five times, which pleased me much."[Footnote:
_Oeuvres_, vii 179 _(Pensées diverses)._]
Beside the tie of friendship we may set that of the family. In old
France this bond was much closer than it is in modern America. If a man
rose in the world, the benefit to his relations was greater than now;
and there was no theory current that a ruler, or a man in a position of
trust, should exclude from the places under him those persons with whom
he is best acquainted, and of whose fidelity to himself and to his
employers he has most reason to be sure. On the other hand, a disgrace
to one member of a family spread its blight on all the others, and the
judicial condemnation of one man might exclude his near relations from
the public service--a state of things which was beginning to be
repugnant to the public conscience, but which had at least the merit of
forming a strong band to restrain the tempted from his contemplated
crime.
In fact, the old idea of the family as an organic whole, with common
joys, honors, and responsibilities, common sorrows and disgraces, was
giving way to the newer notion of individualism. In France, however, the
process never went so far as it has done in some other countries,
including our own.
Good manners were certainly the rule at the French court, but there
were exceptions, and not inconspicuous ones, for Louis XV. was an
unfeeling man, and Louis XVI. was an awkward one. When Mademoiselle
Genêt, fifteen years old, was first engaged as reader to the former
king's daughters, she was in a state of agitation easy to imagine. The
court was in mourning, and the great rooms hung with black, the state
armchairs on platforms, several steps above the floor, the feathers
and the shoulder-knots embroidered with tinsel made a deep impression
on her. When the king first approached, she thought him very
imposing. He was going a-hunting, and was followed by a numerous
train. He stopped short in front of the young girl and the following
dialogue took place:--
"Mademoiselle Genêt, I am told that you are very learned; that you know
four or five foreign languages."
"I know only two, sir," trembling.
"Which are they?"
"English and Italian."
"Do you speak them fluently?"
"Yes, sir, very fluently."
"That's quite enough to put a husband out of temper;" and the king went
on, followed by his laughing train, and left the poor little girl
standing abashed and disconsolate.[Footnote: Campan, i. pp. vi. viii.]
The memoirs of the time are full of stories proving that the rigorous
enforcement of étiquette and the general training in good manners had
not done away with eccentricity of behavior. The Count of Osmont, for
instance, was continually fidgeting with anything that might come under
his hand, and could not see a snuff-box without ladling out the snuff
with three fingers, and sprinkling it over his clothes like a Swiss
porter. He sometimes varied this pleasant performance by putting the box
itself under his nose, to the great disgust of whomever happened to be
its owner. He once spent a week at the house of Madame de Vassy, a lady
who was young and good-looking enough, but stiff and ceremonious. This
lady wore a skirt of crimson velvet over a big panier, and was covered
with pearls and diamonds. Madame de Vassy would not reprove Monsieur
d'Osmont in words for his method of treating her magnificent golden
snuff-box; but used to get up from her place at the card-table as soon
as he had so used it, empty all the snuff into the fireplace, and ring
for more. D'Osmont, meanwhile, would go on without noticing her, laugh
and swear over his cards, and get in a passion with himself if the luck
ran against him. Yet when he was not playing, the man was lively, modest
and amiable, and except for his fidgety habits, had the tone of the best
society.[Footnote: Dufort, ii. 46.]
That which above all things distinguished the French nobility, and
especially the highest ranks of it, from the rest of mankind was the
amount of leisure which it enjoyed. Most people in the world have to
work, most aristocracies to govern The English gentleman of the
eighteenth century farmed his estates, acted as a magistrate, took
part in politics. Living in the country, he was a mighty hunter. The
French nobleman, unless he were an officer in the army (and even the
officers had inordinately long leave of absence), had nothing to do
but to kill time. Only the poorer country gentlemen ever thought of
farming their own lands. For the unemployed nobles of Paris, there was
but occasional sport to be had. Indeed, the Frenchman, although he
likes the more violent and tumultuous kinds of hunting, is not easily
interested in the quieter and more lasting varieties of sport. He will
joyfully chase the wild boar, when horses, dogs, and horns, with the
admiration of his friends and servants, concur to keep his blood
boiling; but he will not care to plod alone through the woods for a
long afternoon on the chance of bringing home a brace of woodcock; nor
can he mention fishing without a sneer. Being thus deprived of the
chief resource by which Anglo-Saxons combine activity and indolence,
the French nobility cultivated to their highest pitch those human
pleasures which are at once the most vivid and the most delicate. They
devoted themselves to society and to love-making. Too quick-witted to
fall into sloth, too proud to become drunkards or gluttons, they
dissipated their lives in conversation and stained their souls with
intrigue. Never, probably, have the arts which make social intercourse
delightful been carried to so high a degree of excellence as among
them. Never perhaps, in a Christian country, have offenses against the
laws of marriage been so readily condoned, where outward decency was
not violated, as in the upper circles of France in the century
preceding the Revolution.
The vice of Parisian society under Louis XV. and his grandson presented
a curious character. Adultery had acquired a regular standing, and
connections dependent upon it were openly, if tacitly recognized. Such
illicit alliances were even governed by a morality of their own, and the
attempt to induce a woman to be unfaithful to her criminal lover might
be treated as an insult.[Footnote: Witness Rousseau and Mme. d'Houdetot
in the _Confessions_. Mlle. d'Aydie was accounted very virtuous for
dissuading her lover from marrying her, even after the birth of her
child, for fear of injuring his prospects. Yet the match would not seem,
to modern ideas, to have been a very unequal one.] But this pedantry of
vice was not always maintained. There were men and women in high life
who changed their connections very frequently, yielding to the caprice
of the moment, as the senses or the wit might lead them. Such people
were not passionate, but simply depraved; yet the mass of the community,
deterred partly by fear of ridicule, and partly by the Philosophic
spirit which had decided that chastity was not a part of natural morals,
did not visit them with very severe condemnation.
If eccentricity sometimes overrode étiquette and even politeness, good
morals and religion not infrequently made a stand against corruption.
There were loving wives and careful mothers among the highest nobility.
Of the Duchess of Ayen we get a description from her children. Her
mansion was in the Rue St. Honoré, and had a garden running back almost
to that of the Tuileries (for the Rue de Rivoli was not then in
existence). The house was known for the beauty of its apartments, and
for the superb collection of pictures which it contained. After dinner,
which was served at three o'clock, the duchess would retire to her
bedchamber, a large room hung with crimson damask, and take her place in
a great armchair by the fire. Her books, her work, her snuff-box, were
within reach. She would call her five girls about her. These, on chairs
and footstools, squabbling gently at times for the places next their
mother, would tell of their excursions, their lessons, the little events
of every day. There was nothing frivolous in their education. Their old
nurse had not filled their minds with fairy tales, but with stories from
the Old Testament and with anecdotes of heroic actions.
The pleasures of these girls were simple. Once or twice in a summer they
went on a visit to their grandfather, the Marshal de Noailles at Saint
Germain en Laye. In the autumn they spent a week with their other
grandfather, Monsieur d'Aguesseau at Fresnes. An excursion into the
suburbs, a ride on donkeys on the slopes of Mont Valérien, made up their
innocent dissipations. Their most frivolous excitement was to see their
governess fall off her donkey.
The piety of the duchess might in some respects appear extravagant. Her
fourth daughter had two beggars of the parish for god-parents, as a
constant reminder of humility. The same child was of a violent and
willful disposition, but was converted at the age of eleven and became
mild, patient, and studious. The conversion of so young a sinner, and
the seriousness with which the event was treated by the family, seem
rather to belong to the atmosphere of Puritanism than to that of the
Catholicism of the eighteenth century. But if the religion of the
Duchess of Ayen sometimes led her to fantastic extremes, these were not
its principal characteristics. Her piety was applied to the conduct of
her daily life and to the education of her daughters in honesty,
reasonableness, and self-devotion. Their faith and hers were to be
tested by the hardest trials, and to be victorious both in prison and on
the scaffold. We are fortunate in possessing their biographies. In how
many cases at the same time and in the same country did similar virtues
go unrecorded?[Footnote: Vie de Madame de Lafayette, Mme. de Montagu.]
As for the smaller nobility, the "sparrow hawks,"[Footnote: Hobéraux.]
living in the country, they dwelt among their less exalted neighbors,
doing good or evil as the character of each one of them directed.
Sometimes we find them on friendly terms with the villagers, acting as
godfathers and godmothers to the children, summoning the peasants to
take part in the chase, or to dance in the courtyard of the castle. We
find them endowing hospitals, giving alms, keeping an eye on the conduct
of the village priest. A continual interchange of presents goes on
between the cottage and the great house. A new lord is welcomed by
salvos of musketry, the ladies of his family are met by young girls
bearing flowers. Such relations as these are said to have grown less
common as the great Revolution drew near. It has often been remarked of
the Vendée and Brittany, where a larger proportion of lords resided on
their estates than was the case elsewhere, that a friendlier feeling was
there cultivated between the upper and the lower classes; and that it
was in those provinces that a stand was made by lords and peasants alike
for the maintenance of the old order of things. In some parts of the
country the peasants and their lords were continually quarreling and
going to law. The royal intendant was besieged with complaints. The poor
could not get their pay for their work. They received blows instead of
money. Arrogance and injustice on the one side were met by impudence and
fraud on the other. The old leadership had passed away. The upper class
had lost its power and its responsibility; it insisted the more
tenaciously on its privileges. Exemption from certain taxes was the
chief of these, but there were others as irritating if less important.
Quarrels arose with the priest about the lord's right to be first given
the holy water. One vicar in his wrath deluged his lordship's new wig.
In general, we may conceive of the lesser nobles, deprived of their
useful function of regulating and administering the country, leading
somewhat penurious and useless lives. They hunted a good deal, they
slept long. Generally they did not eat overmuch, for gluttony is not a
vice of their race. They grumbled at the ascendency of the court, and at
the new army-regulations. They preserved in their families the noble
virtues of dignity and obedience. Children asked their parents' blessing
on their knees before they went to bed. The elder Mirabeau, the grim
Friend of Men, still knelt nightly before his mother in his fiftieth
year. The children honored their parents in fact as well as in form, and
took no important step in life without paternal consent. The boys ran
rather wild in their youth, but settled down at the approach of middle
life; the oldest inheriting the few or barren paternal acres; the
younger sons equally noble, and thus debarred from lucrative
occupations, pushing their fortunes in the army. The girls were married
young or went into a convent. Marriages were arranged entirely by the
parents. "My father," said a young nobleman, "I am told that you have
agreed on a marriage for me. Would you be kind enough to tell me if the
report be true, and what is the name of the lady?" "My son," answered
his parent, "be so good as to mind your own business, and not to come to
me with questions."[Footnote: Babeau, _Le Village_, 158. Ch. de
Kibbe, 169. Mme. de Montagu, 57. Genlis, _Dictionnaire des
Étiquettes,_ i. 71. Lavergne, _Les Économistes,_ 127.]