for the changes in the governing forces were so perpetual, that, more or less, every particular form of envy and hatred had its day of power, and levelled its blows at the objects of its special antipathy.  In this way, the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie were often brought into contact; marriages even were contracted, whether during imprisonment or under the pressure of poverty, that never would have been dreamt of in a normal state of things; and whilst parents of opposite conditions shook hands in the scaffold-surveying charrettes, the children either drew near to each other, in a mutual helpfulness, the principle whereof was Christian charity, or met together to partake of amusements, the aim whereof was oblivion.  For several years, the turn of every individual for execution might come, and therefore it was difficult, on the other hand, to see who might also not be a friend.

This began to be modified under the Empire, but in a shape not hitherto foreseen.  Military glory began to long for what the genuine Revolutionists termed “feudal distinctions.”  Napoleon was desirous of a court and of an aristocracy; he set to work to create a noblesse, and dukes and counts were fabricated by the dozen.  Very soon the strong love of depreciation, that is inherent in every Frenchman, seized upon even the higher plebeian classes, and, discontented as they were at seeing the liberties of the movement of ’89 utterly confiscated by a military chief, and antipathetic as they have been, time out of mind, to what are called les traineurs de sabre, the civilians of France, her bourgeois, who were to have their day,—­but with very different feelings in 1830,—­joined with the genuine Pre-Revolutionary aristocrats, and the noblesse de l’Empire was laughed at and taken en grippe.  Here was, in reality, the first wide breach made in France in the edifice of good-breeding and good-manners; and those who have been eye-witnesses to the metamorphosis will admit that the guillotine of Danton and Robespierre did even less to destroy le bon ton of the ancien regime than was achieved by the guard-room habits and morals of Bonaparte’s glorious troopers, rushing, as they did, booted and spurred, into the emblazoned sanctuary of heraldic distinctions, and taking, as it were, la societe by storm.

But soon another alliance and other enmities were to be formed.  The Empire fell; the Bourbons returned to France; Louis XVIII. recognized the noblesse of the Imperial government, and the constitution of society as it had been battled for by the Revolution.  At the same time his court was filled with all the great historic names of the country, who returned, no longer avowedly the first in authority, and therefore prompt to condescend, but the first in presumption, and therefore prompt to take offence.  The new alliance that was formed was that of the plebeian caste with the noblesse de l’Empire, against