titles could not be transmitted through females; when a woman made a misalliance her titles were given to her children.  Almost all rich men of the period, from the time of Louis XIII. to the Revolution, became nobles, as almost every brave man was made a knight up to the seventeenth century.  It was possible for the wealthy to buy a marquisate or baronetage and give it to their children; a grand-marshal of France was no longer so powerful as a rich banker.

The complete change, under Louis XIV., of the customs of the time, caused numberless petty jealousies, scandals, and intrigues in the aristocracy, which could no longer maintain its old form and yet had to be considered by the government.  The question of reform arose—­how to restrict the number of nobles, which increased every year.  Rank was bestowed for service and, sometimes, even for wealth; the old families, being poor, had no distinctive prestige except that given by their privileges at court; their titles no longer distinguished them from the newcomers, whom they gradually began to disdain, and the result was a general lowering of the standing, importance, and influence of nobility.  Another party which gained prominence was that of the bench; the judges, as interpreters of the king’s laws, became powerful, for law was absolute.  A deadly rivalry sprang up between the parties of rank with no money or power and of power and money without rank.

The desire of every man of rank to be independent, to be a force in himself instead of a part of a unit which might be useful to the state as a whole, was one of the principal defects of the French aristocracy; poverty crushed it, idleness robbed it of its alertness, intriguing and gradual oppression reduced it to despair.  Appointed to offices, its members failed in the performance of their duties; the latter fell to the under men who, while the aristocracy was busy at fetes, in society, at the table, became experts in the affairs of the government—­shrewd politicians and financiers.  The new nobility, that of the robe, replaced that of the sword in all interests of the government except war; gradually, Parliament was made up of men who, having been elevated to the rank of nobility, retained their aversion to those who were noble by birth, recognizing only the king as their superior and refusing precedence to even the princes of the blood.  Louis XIV., however, objecting to and fearing such a strong class as that of the robe, employed, wherever possible, people of lower rank.  Thus it happened in the seventeenth century that the still powerful nobility of higher rank was scorned and kept down; but in the eighteenth century, when the gentlemen of the robe had become all-powerful and therefore constituted a dangerous party, it was they who became the objects of scorn and persecution, while the aristocrats of blood, the gentlemen of the court, recovered the royal favors through their political powerlessness.