larly excelled in setting down any unlucky person who had happened to offend them. Their main object, at this time, was to stand well at court, therefore they adapted themselves to circumstances, and could be devout with the Dauphine and sceptical with Louis the Eighteenth.
The men of the aristocracy of the Revolution were less clever and satirical than the women; but, on the other hand, they had far more of the distinguished bearing and graceful urbanity of the grands seigneurs of the olden time. The emigré nobles would have gazed with unutterable horror at their degenerate descendants of the present day; but these young, booted, bearded, cigar-smoking scions of la jeune France would have run round their courteous, though perhaps rather slow ancestors, in all the details of daily life.
The principal houses of reception in those days were those of the Montmorencys, the Richelieus, Birons, Rohans, Gontauts, Talleyrands, Beauffremonts, Luxemburgs, Crillons, Choiseuls, Chabots, Fitzjameses, Grammonts, Latour de Pins, Coislins, and Maillys. Most of these mansions are now occupied as public offices, or Jesuitical schools, or by foreign Ministers. Those
