hrough the various offices bought by them or given to them by
the government. The financier was a king and many marriages of princes
and dukes with daughters of men of wealth are recorded. Women of
station, however, seldom married beneath their rank, because they
lost their titles by so doing, and titles were still the only road
to social success. As a rule, titles could not be transmitted through
females; when a woman made a misalliance her titles were given to her
children. Almost all rich men of the period, from the time of Louis
XIII. to the Revolution, became nobles, as almost every brave man was
made a knight up to the seventeenth century. It was possible for
the wealthy to buy a marquisate or baronetage and give it to their
children; a grand-marshal of France was no longer so powerful as a
rich banker.

The complete change, under Louis XIV., of the customs of the time,
caused numberless petty jealousies, scandals, and intrigues in the
aristocracy, which could no longer maintain its old form and yet had
to be considered by the government. The question of reform arose--how
to restrict the number of nobles, which increased every year. Rank
was bestowed for service and, sometimes, even for wealth; the old
families, being poor, had no distinctive prestige except that given by
their privileges at court; their titles no longer distinguished them
from the newcomers, whom they gradually began to disdain, and the
result was a general lowering of the standing, importance, and
influence of nobility. Another party which gained prominence was that
of the bench; the judges, as interpreters of the king's laws, became
powerful, for law was absolute. A deadly rivalry sprang up between the
parties of rank with no money or power and of power and money without
rank.

The desire of every man of rank to be independent, to be a force in
himself instead of a part of a unit which might be useful to the
state as a whole, was one of the principal defects of the French
aristocracy; poverty crushed it, idleness robbed it of its alertness,
intriguing and gradual oppression reduced it to despair. Appointed to
offices, its members failed in the performance of their duties; the
latter fell to the under men who, while the aristocracy was busy at
fetes, in society, at the table, became experts in the affairs of the
government--shrewd politicians and financiers. The new nobility,
that of the robe, replaced that of the sword in all interests of the