esse that deserved
praise and blame in equal measure; a noblesse that will never be judged
impartially until some poet shall arise to tell how joyfully the nobles
obeyed the King though their heads fell under a Richelieu's axe, and how
deeply they scorned the guillotine of '89 as a foul revenge.

Another noticeable trait in all the four was a thin voice that agreed
peculiarly well with their ideas and bearing. Among themselves, at any
rate, they were on terms of perfect equality. None of them betrayed
any sign of annoyance over the Duchess's escapade, but all of them had
learned at Court to hide their feelings.

And here, lest critics should condemn the puerility of the opening of
the forthcoming scene, it is perhaps as well to remind the reader that
Locke, once happening to be in the company of several great lords,
renowned no less for their wit than for their breeding and political
consistency, wickedly amused himself by taking down their conversation
by some shorthand process of his own; and afterwards, when he read
it over to them to see what they could make of it, they all burst out
laughing. And, in truth, the tinsel jargon which circulates among the
upper ranks in every country yields mighty little gold to the crucible
when washed in the ashes of literature or philosophy. In every rank of
society (some few Parisian salons excepted) the curious observer finds
folly a constant quantity beneath a more or less transparent varnish.
Conversation with any substance in it is a rare exception, and
boeotianism is current coin in every zone. In the higher regions they
must perforce talk more, but to make up for it they think the less.
Thinking is a tiring exercise, and the rich like their lives to flow by
easily and without effort. It is by comparing the fundamental matter of
jests, as you rise in the social scale from the street-boy to the peer
of France, that the observer arrives at a true comprehension of M. de
Talleyrand's maxim, "The manner is everything"; an elegant rendering of
the legal axiom, "The form is of more consequence than the matter." In
the eyes of the poet the advantage rests with the lower classes, for
they seldom fail to give a certain character of rude poetry to their
thoughts. Perhaps also this same observation may explain the sterility
of the salons, their emptiness, their shallowness, and the repugnance
felt by men of ability for bartering their ideas for such pitiful small
change.

The Duke sudd