stantly in the habit of expressing his indignation at the want of good-breeding of the young exquisites of the Empire, and used perpetually to exclaim, "In _my time_" this or that "would not have been allowed," or, "In _my_ time we were accustomed to do" so and so. Now Fouché's "time" was that which is regarded as the period of universal beheading and levelling.
It is certain, that, under the _régime_ of the Revolution itself, bitter class-hatreds did not at first show themselves in the peaceful atmosphere of society,--and that for more than one reason. First of all, in a certain sense, "society," it may be said, was _not_. Next, what subsisted of society was fragmentary, and was formed by small isolated groups or coteries, pretty homogeneously composed, or, when not so as to rank and station, rendered homogeneous by community of suffering. It must not be imagined that only the highest class in France paid for its opinions or its vanities with loss of life and fortune. The victims were everywhere; 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 régime_ 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 société_ 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 which it had been previously so incensed. Notwith
