, for instance, had scarcely any connection with the
Rivieres, Blacas, d'Avarays, Vitrolles, d'Autichamps, Pasquiers,
Larochejaqueleins, Decazes, Dambrays, Laines, de Villeles, La
Bourdonnayes, and others who shone at the court of Louis XV. Compare
the courtiers of Henri IV. with those of Louis XIV.; you will hardly
find five great families of the former time still in existence. The
nephew of the great Richelieu was a very insignificant person at the
court of Louis XIV.; while His Majesty's favorite, Villeroi, was the
grandson of a secretary ennobled by Charles IX. And so it befell that
the d'Esgrignons, all but princes under the Valois, and all-powerful
in the time of Henri IV., had no fortune whatever at the court of
Louis XVIII., which gave them not so much as a thought. At this day
there are names as famous as those of royal houses--the Foix-Graillys,
for instance, or the d'Herouvilles--left to obscurity tantamount to
extinction for want of money, the one power of the time.
All which things Victurnien beheld entirely from his own point of
view; he felt the equality that he saw in Paris as a personal wrong.
The monster Equality was swallowing down the last fragments of social
distinction in the Restoration. Having made up his mind on this head,
he immediately proceeded to try to win back his place with such
dangerous, if blunted weapons, as the age left to the noblesse.
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