All these turpitudes would be unimportant if our poor nobility were still triumphantly occupying their rightful position; but while they are struggling to recover their prestige what can be done with such representatives?  Oh, I hated those little fools who by their culpable folly compromised so noble a cause!  Can they not see that each of their silly blunders furnishes an arm against the principles they defend, against their party, against us all?  They are at war with a country that distrusts their motives and detests and envies their advantages ... and they amuse themselves by irritating the country by their aggressive hostility and blustering idleness.  By thus displaying their ill manners and want of sense, it seems as if they wished to justify all the accusations of their enemies and gain what they really deserve, a worse reputation than they already bear.  They are accused of being ignorant ... they are illiterate!  They are accused of being impudent ...  They are insolent!  They are accused of being beasts ...  They show themselves to be brutes!  And yet not much is exacted of them, because they are known to be degenerate.  Only half what is required from others is expected from them.  They are not asked for heroism or talent, or genius:  they are only expected to behave with dignity, they cannot even assume it!  They are not asked to add to the lustre of their names, they are only entreated to respect them—­and they drag them in the mire!  Ah, these people make me die of shame and indignation.

It is from this nursery of worthless, idle young fops that I, Irene de Chateaudun, will be forced to choose a husband.  No, never will I suffer the millions that Providence has bestowed upon me to be squandered upon ballet-dancers and the scum of Paris!  If it be absolutely necessary that my fortune should be enjoyed by women, I will bestow it upon a convent, where I will retire for the rest of my life; but I certainly would prefer becoming the wife of a poor, obscure, but noble-minded student, thirsting for glory and ambitious of making illustrious his plebeian name, seeking among the dust of ages for the secret of fame ... than to marry one of the degenerate scions of an old family, who crawl around crushed by the weight of their formidable name; these little burlesque noblemen who retain nothing of their high position but pride and vanity; who can neither think, act, work nor suffer for their country; these disabled knights who wage war against bailiffs and make their names notorious in the police offices and tap-rooms of the Boulevard.

It is glorious to feel flowing in one’s veins noble, heroic blood, to be intoxicated with youthful pride when studying the history of one’s country, to see one’s school-mates forced to commit to memory as a duty, the brilliant record of the heroic deeds of our ancestors!  To enter upon a smooth path made easy and pleasant for us by those gone before; to be already armed with the remembrance of noble