* Knyazhnina, “Khvastun.”

And Catherine did more than this.  She shared the idea—­generally accepted throughout Europe since the brilliant reign of Louis XIV.—­that a refined, pomp-loving, pleasure-seeking Court Noblesse was not only the best bulwark of Monarchy, but also a necessary ornament of every highly civilised State; and as she ardently desired that her country should have the reputation of being highly civilised, she strove to create this national ornament.  The love of French civilisation, which already existed among the upper classes of her subjects, here came to her aid, and her efforts in this direction were singularly successful.  The Court of St. Petersburg became almost as brilliant, as galant, and as frivolous as the Court of Versailles.  All who aimed at high honours adopted French fashions, spoke the French language, and affected an unqualified admiration for French classical literature.  The Courtiers talked of the point d’honneur, discussed the question as to what was consistent with the dignity of a noble, sought to display “that chivalrous spirit which constitutes the pride and ornament of France”; and looked back with horror on the humiliating position of their fathers and grandfathers.  “Peter the Great,” writes one of them, “beat all who surrounded him, without distinction of family or rank; but now, many of us would certainly prefer capital punishment to being beaten or flogged, even though the castigation were applied by the sacred hands of the Lord’s Anointed.”

The tone which reigned in the Court circle of St. Petersburg spread gradually towards the lower ranks of the Dvoryanstvo, and it seemed to superficial observers that a very fair imitation of the French Noblesse had been produced; but in reality the copy was very unlike the model.  The Russian Dvoryanin easily learned the language and assumed the manners of the French gentilhomme, and succeeded in changing his physical and intellectual exterior; but all those deeper and more delicate parts of human nature which are formed by the accumulated experience of past generations could not be so easily and rapidly changed.  The French gentilhomme of the eighteenth century was the direct descendant of the feudal baron, with the fundamental conceptions of his ancestors deeply embedded in his nature.  He had not, indeed, the old haughty bearing towards the Sovereign, and his language was tinged with the fashionable democratic philosophy of the time; but he possessed a large intellectual and moral inheritance that had come down to him directly from the palmy days of feudalism—­an inheritance which even the Great Revolution, which was then preparing, could not annihilate.  The Russian noble, on the contrary, had received from his ancestors entirely different traditions.  His father and grandfather had been conscious of the burdens rather than the privileges of the class to which they belonged.  They had considered it no disgrace to receive corporal