The names of the families grouped about the throne are quite different in each successive reign, and the characters change with the names.  It would seem that, in the sphere of court, the same thing happens over and over again in each generation; but each time there is a quite different set of personages.  If history did not prove that this is so, it would seem incredible.  The prominent men at the court of Louis XVIII., for instance, had scarcely any connection with the Rivieres, Blacas, d’Avarays, Vitrolles, d’Autichamps, Pasquiers, Larochejaqueleins, Decazes, Dambrays, Laines, de Villeles, La Bourdonnayes, and others who shone at the court of Louis XV.  Compare the courtiers of Henri IV. with those of Louis XIV.; you will hardly find five great families of the former time still in existence.  The nephew of the great Richelieu was a very insignificant person at the court of Louis XIV.; while His Majesty’s favorite, Villeroi, was the grandson of a secretary ennobled by Charles IX.  And so it befell that the d’Esgrignons, all but princes under the Valois, and all-powerful in the time of Henri IV., had no fortune whatever at the court of Louis XVIII., which gave them not so much as a thought.  At this day there are names as famous as those of royal houses—­the Foix-Graillys, for instance, or the d’Herouvilles—­left to obscurity tantamount to extinction for want of money, the one power of the time.

All which things Victurnien beheld entirely from his own point of view; he felt the equality that he saw in Paris as a personal wrong.  The monster Equality was swallowing down the last fragments of social distinction in the Restoration.  Having made up his mind on this head, he immediately proceeded to try to win back his place with such dangerous, if blunted weapons, as the age left to the noblesse.  It is an expensive matter to gain the attention of Paris.  To this end, Victurnien adopted some of the ways then in vogue.  He felt that it was a necessity to have horses and fine carriages, and all the accessories of modern luxury; he felt, in short, “that a man must keep abreast of the times,” as de Marsay said—­de Marsay, the first dandy that he came across in the first drawing-room to which he was introduced.  For his misfortune, he fell in with a set of roues, with de Marsay, de Ronquerolles, Maxime de Trailles, des Lupeaulx, Rastignac, Ajuda-Pinto, Beaudenord, de la Roche-Hugon, de Manerville, and the Vandenesses, whom he met wherever he went, and a great many houses were open to a young man with his ancient name and reputation for wealth.  He went to the Marquise d’Espard’s, to the Duchesses de Grandlieu, de Carigliano, and de Chaulieu, to the Marquises d’Aiglemont and de Listomere, to Mme. de Serizy’s, to the Opera, to the embassies and elsewhere.  The Faubourg Saint-Germain has its provincial genealogies at its fingers’ ends; a great name once recognized and adopted therein is a passport which opens many a door that will scarcely turn on its hinges for unknown names or the lions of a lower rank.