“Ah!” said the mistress of the house, smiling, “you must acknowledge for once that you were not obliged to do that.  We have all heard of your splendid dress of pearls; but I should be much vexed were it still the custom to wear such.”

“Oh, Madame la Marquise, do not fear, those times of magnificence never will return.  We committed follies, no doubt, but they proved our independence; it is clear that it would then have been hard to convert from their allegiance to the King adherents who were attached to him by love alone, and whose coronets contained as many diamonds as his own locked-up crown.  It is also certain that ambition could not then attack all classes, since such expenses could come only from rich hands, and since gold comes only from mines.  Those great houses, which are being so furiously assailed, were not ambitious, and frequently, desiring no employment from the Government, maintained their places at court by their own weight, existed upon their own foundation, and might say, as one of them did say, ‘The Prince condescends not; I am Rohan.’  It was the same with every noble family, to which its own nobility sufficed; the King himself expressed it in writing to one of my friends:  ’Money is not a common thing between gentlemen like you and me.’”

“But, Monsieur le Marechal,” coldly, and with extreme politeness, interrupted M. de Launay, who perhaps intended to anger him, “this independence has produced as many civil wars and revolts as those of Monsieur de Montmorency.”

“Monsieur!  I can not consent to hear these things spoken,” said the fiery Marechal, leaping up in his armchair.  “Those revolts and wars had nothing to do with the fundamental laws of the State, and could no more have overturned the throne than a duel could have done so.  Of all the great party-chiefs, there was not one who would not have laid his victory at the feet of the King, had he succeeded, knowing well that all the other lords who were as great as himself would have abandoned the enemy of the legitimate sovereign.  Arms were taken against a faction, and not against the sovereign authority; and, this destroyed, everything went on again in the old way.  But what have you done in crushing us?  You have crushed the arm of the throne, and have not put anything in its place.  Yes, I no longer doubt that the Cardinal-Duke will wholly accomplish his design; the great nobility will leave and lose their lands, and, ceasing to be great proprietors, they will cease to be a great power.  The court is already no more than a palace where people beg; by and by it will become an antechamber, when it will be composed only of those who constitute the suite of the King.  Great names will begin by ennobling vile offices; but, by a terrible reaction, those offices will end by rendering great names vile.  Estranged from their homes, the nobility will be dependent upon the employments which they shall have received; and if the people, over whom they will no longer have any influence, choose to revolt—­”